Editor's Note: As part of a paid partnership, cllct was invited to spend 24 hours inside Joe Hollywood's Whatnot show.
ATLANTA — It’s 4:37 p.m. on a Friday, but Joe DePasquale's long workday has yet to begin.
From his office window, DePasquale can see cars pulling out of the parking lot to head home for the weekend, but he is still four hours away from showtime.
Settled into a brown leather couch, he coordinates an upcoming show through a phone in his left hand. At the end of his right hand is a nail technician working on his weekly manicure.
Further up his arm is a banana bag of IV fluids pumping vitamins into his veins.
DePasquale jokes about how silly the process seems, but for the next day and half he’ll play the part of Joe Hollywood, one of the most popular sellers of vintage and high-end sports card packs, boxes and singles on live-selling platform Whatnot.
Hollywood’s 24-hour streams, which typically average closer to 30 hours, stretch from Friday night into early Sunday morning, and during that time he won’t eat, won’t go to the bathroom and will consume limited fluids.
Silly or not, he needs the IV to stay hydrated and the manicure because his hands will be on camera more than his face — and he isn’t interested in being bullied over his fingernails again.
How does Joe Hollywood find the energy for those 24-hour-plus streams on @Whatnot?
— cllct (@cllctMedia) November 20, 2025
cllct went behind the scenes … and tried to keep up. pic.twitter.com/joTeJKcf6g
Hollywood’s 24-hour-plus streams have become some of the most popular events on the platform, and while it might be easier on his body to host shorter streams, he believes it’s important to maximize the moment.
The card category has delivered record online sales multiple times in recent months, and Whatnot as a platform recently topped an $11 billion valuation following a recent funding round.
“I think that it would be easier to go down on the hours, but to me it’s not so easy,” Hollywood told cllct. “This is something where I’m really engaged, and I really love the community. I don’t know how long it’s going to last for … I feel like right now, Whatnot is in hyper-growth mode, and while it’s in that mode, if we’re not putting 100% of our effort and energy into it, I think that’s a mistake.
“I can rest when I’m dead. Right now, I’m pretty excited about what’s going on.”
Hollywood’s collecting journey isn’t so different from most collectors. It began at age 8 when his grandfather gave him a pack of 1985 Topps Baseball cards. Interest continued with 1987 Topps Baseball and eventually the chase for Ken Griffey Jr.’s 1989 Upper Deck rookie.
According to Hollywood, he quit “cold turkey” after landing a job in finance and didn’t touch the hobby for 20 years.
Then he got COVID-19.
Hollywood was locked inside during the pandemic when he was introduced to breaking and live selling. Memories of collecting those Topps Baseball sets were rekindled, and the experience was only enhanced with Hollywood now able to collect with his oldest son, Joe Jr.
The postal worker eventually stopped bringing items to the door and simply stacked packages atop the mailbox in protest.
Protests continued inside the home, too, with Hollywood’s wife, Dori, pushing for much of the collection to be liquidated. Hollywood’s mother was a hoarder, and he didn’t want to follow the trend.
“When I first saw the extent of Joe’s collection in the storage unit, I was in shock," Dori said. "As the movers unloaded box after box, binders, Tupperware bins, you name it, it felt endless.
"I had no idea what any of it was worth, so my first reaction was basically, ‘Oh no, not in my dream home.'"
The first “Joe Hollywood” streams — he earned the nickname after appearing in Woody Allen’s 1987 film, “Radio Days,” as a kid — began next to a hot-water heater in the family’s basement. In the early streams, Hollywood attempted to sell off parts of that collection, and the show typically ended when his phone battery died.
His next setup wasn’t much better, this time working from his son’s train table.
A ping-pong table was a brief stopgap before Hollywood eventually moved his stream into a spare bedroom. Now armed with access to a proper phone charger and an Amazon speaker playing tunes in the background, the “Joe Hollywood” community was surging, customers were making requests for new products and working from home was no longer an option.
“I’m watching my viewership rise, and my viewers are going from 10 to 20 to 100 to 500 and then 1,000,” Hollywood said. “I still remember the first time I had 1,000 people in my room. Freaked out. I was jumping out of my skin. When I hit 1,000 people in my room, I was like, 'OK, it’s time.'”
The first major move for the business was what the family calls the “Hollywood House” — a three-bedroom ranch located in an Atlanta suburb. The team converted the master bedroom into the stream’s main studio.
That location didn’t last long. The house was quickly consumed by sealed boxes of cards and singles, while employees struggled to find the space to park.
Even as a child, Hollywood thought the best sports cards could be great investments later in life. He was right, but he didn’t expect this.
“I never thought in my wildest dreams that it was going to work out like that,” Hollywood said. “I never thought that it was going to happen to the scale of how this works, how this went. I never thought I was going to scale to that magnitude.”
The path to becoming one of Whatnot’s biggest live sellers was far from linear.
Hollywood made critical mistakes when selling off parts of his collection. Flipping a 1996 Flair Showcase Michael Jordan Hot Shots in raw condition was a big one, with PSA 10 examples now fetching $20,000-plus on the post-pandemic secondary market.
Hollywood’s community, which now often hits 100,000-plus views per stream, also started slow. The earliest events featured a handful of viewers or less.
Months into selling regularly, Hollywood had thoughts of quitting.
“I remember doing a show, and I thought I had it. Oh my God, I had such a great show planned, and I had all of these great singles that I found from my collection,” Hollywood said. “Nobody showed up. I had two people in my room the entire night. I never broke seven. I had a lot of people tell me they were gonna show up, and they didn’t show up.”
Despite several early blows, the growth of the Joe Hollywood channel has surged within the last 18 months.
The business recently transitioned to an Atlanta-area office park where it takes up three separate addresses. In total, the 10,000-square-foot space features more than 10 offices, including four streaming studios, and a warehouse used for packing and shipping.
Originally launched to sell parts of his collection, Hollywood's channel now features everything from vintage baseball and football to high-end, ultra-modern basketball. In 2025, Hollywood is also the top live seller of Fanatics' Under Wraps mystery products.
An early November event attended by cllct generated more than 98,000 total views and nearly 3,900 orders from roughly 370 first-time buyers.
As of this week, the flagship Joe Hollywood Whatnot channel and his second channel, TheJoeHollywoodShow, have sold a combined 200,000 items on the platform and are closing in on 400,000 followers. Hollywood says hitting 1 million total followers on the platform is a long-term goal the company is currently chasing.
“The past 18 months have been an incredible ride," Dori said. "Joe has always dreamed big, worked hard, and has this remarkable way of connecting with people, so I’m not surprised by how the Whatnot community has rallied around him.
"But if you told me back when he was streaming from the basement that we’d have a 10,000-square-foot office with four studios and 30 employees, I’d have said you were crazy.”
Hollywood credits the channel’s growth to a friendly community and regular appearances by former athletes. Byron Scott, a three-time NBA champion with the Showtime Lakers, called into the show attended by cllct to chat and share a story or two.
Then there’s the generosity from viewers, with members often donating items they paid for to the stream as giveaways. Several members, in particular, are known to donate much of what they pay for back to the stream.
“I think where a lot of our success comes from is [viewers] have a great experience, and they have a lot of fun on the show,” Hollywood said. “At the end of the day, collecting is supposed to be something that gives you joy, right? I think one of the things that we really do well here is we continuously keep a positive atmosphere on the stream. We continue to bring back that joy.”
For Hollywood, the next step for the business is expanding beyond the Atlanta area. Adding another channel based on the West Coast makes sense. He’d like to tap into hockey collectors in Canada and soccer collectors in the United Kingdom as well.
He'd also like to get athletes more involved. In addition to Scott, Hollywood has done streams with John Starks, Oswaldo Cabrera, Mike Gesicki, Miles McBride and Grant Williams with cameos from Bo Jackson, Dennis Rodman and others.
Upcoming opportunities could also result in Hollywood licensing the brand to be used for card shops.
For now, though, he’s busy with his 24-hour streams. In addition to hosting each event, Hollywood is the only buyer of product for each stream.
The stream cllct attended lasted roughly 32 hours. By the end, Hollywood was losing his voice but had largely remained seated for the duration.
Once packed floor-to-ceiling with sealed products and hundreds of mystery boxes, the main studio felt sparse.
That stream ended a little after 4 a.m. on a Sunday morning.
Later this month, he’ll attempt a 48-hour stream for Black Friday.
“I want to make something to eat,” Hollywood said after ending the show and raiding another live seller. “I’m going to make a little pasta for myself, and then I’m going to bed.”
Want more stories like this? Subscribe to the cllct newsletter and follow cllct on X and Instagram.
Ben Burrows is a reporter and editor for cllct, the premier company for collectible culture. He was previously the collectibles editor at Sports Illustrated. You can follow him on X and Instagram @benmburrows.