Passion to Profession: Inside PSA’s Athlete Strategy with Ryan Greene

alright we are back another episode of passionate profession brought to you by my good friends at ebay have a returning guest a good friend in the hobby today we're joined by ryan green who is the director of athlete and artist partnerships at psa it is a new title for ryan since the last time that's right we we spoke but that's really the catalyst for today's conversation we're gonna be talking about the athlete era of the hobby and kind of this role ryan is working on with athletes and learning about how it came to be kind of what his day to day looks like and everything in between but without further ado ryan welcome back how are you man i'm doing good man i feel like i've been listening to you all day i was listening to the football card podcast here in my office before we started recording usually funny story i i save it every week you guys release the episodes on friday on my sunday afternoon walk every week that's my that's my soundtrack is the football card pod so i changed it up a little bit this week i was listening to it at work but good stuff as always yes appreciate that you know it's you can never get enough maybe you can never get enough of pat nicholson you can probably get enough of of me here at stacking slabs but maybe before we jump into the topic at hand we know that you are a very passionate collector you've been collecting in this space for a long time and you are all are also a very passionate chicago bears fan and maybe like the last time we recorded it was like you know we just hope for the best your team ended up having a really fun year maybe share some perspective of like the season last year and you as a fan and a collector like how you reacted to all that that was the first end of a season ever where i legitimately got sad that i had to wait seven months for september round like i i i'm still i'm still like just itching so now seeing all the ota's content get shared it's just like it's like literally giving me goosebumps and getting me just so excited pack like we're we we send messages back and forth about it like every time one of these like clips drops like yesterday there was a clip of caleb williams throwing a flick of the wrist seventy yard pass downfield is a good pass yeah just like great now i gotta wait three more months for games to actually happen but i've been collecting in the off season that's how i've been kinda like bridging it i actually have a couple of mine with me like i've like picked i've been getting some caleb stuff i got i got a donris elite gold out of ten rookie this off season this was this is my favorite caleb off season pickup though i got the twenty twenty five gold prism and and then a little off the beaten path from the caleb collection i got a colson loveland we got the gold xrc this off season so i've that's how i've been kinda collecting is like saving my saving my i don't know what you call it like i'm the it's been it's been keeping my brain occupied while we're going six seven months without bears football so yeah that's fun and obviously when a number one draft pick wills a historic franchise into playoff victories and does so in a miraculous way it's not just the fan base that reacts but it's the outsiders who are like oh you know what this guy could be something special so it's prob probably hasn't been easy to land the caleb cards that you want at the price you want you're probably trying to have a nav navigate that as well it's been yeah it's been i i can't reme even like the justin fields mania of like the twenty twenty two off season like wasn't quite like this like so i've had to be very selective i haven't bought any in a couple months because now it's just starting to get ridiculous but it's fun nonetheless like i can't i can't believe i'm this excited about bears football in in in may june that's rarely been the case it'll be here before you know it i'm excited man to talk about this because i think right now this industry is moving so quickly and there's news there's headline sales there's events there's new formats there's content everywhere and then there's also athletes and i mean you know you've got card vault by tom brady you got fanatics fest with all of these athletes involved you've got clips of athletes with cards maybe more than ever before so they're really getting integrated into hobby culture and this is something this is like an area where you're living day in and day out mhmm so maybe like as we get into this let's take a step back and if you can we will i wanna talk about like you getting into this role but obviously like collectors and psa observe this trend maybe like from your perspective what what when did like psa start notice the noticing this and when did they start realizing like there's an opportunity based on what they saw happening with athletes and their their kinda integration into the hobby and hobby culture you know it sort of evolved over time i've been at psa collectors since september twenty twenty one so i'm coming up on five years now which is kinda crazy to say out loud i've been in this role since last june so it's been about a year if you told me in twenty one that this would be a role that we would have four years down the road i i probably wouldn't have believed you you know it would have taken a lot of foresight and i and i think this kind of all happened gradually and in a way very organically i go back to twenty twenty one and i've been a collector since the nineties you know i took like everyone i have the four five years off before i turned you know when i was out of college focusing on my career and my life and then you know reconnected with it about a decade ago but you know it was so different for me around twenty twenty twenty twenty one to all of a sudden start seeing athletes be a little more visible in collecting i visibly or i vividly remember mike trout on sunday night baseball doing a dugout interview in twenty twenty one talking about how he'd started collecting his own cards for his son and you know things like that where where you were seeing athletes openly talk about participating in the hobby bobby wood junior was another one who's been a friend of psa and a partner of psa for years now you just kinda started seeing these things popping up everywhere and what really impressed me off the bat is you know we started to outreach with athletes about you know with like i mentioned trout and bobby you know other guys across mlb other guys across other sports as word-of-mouth kinda spread and and we would get connected with these guys was how organic all of it was like you know you think about athletes and you think about brands and you think about them being like paid pitchmen and you know athletes being you know like i don't know you guys were talking about mcdonald's on the on the football club pod right so you're thinking about like seeing michael jordan in a mcdonald's commercial growing up but does michael jordan actually eat mcdonald's like i don't know some of the you know whereas the guys who are getting into cards it just it you could tell like if you're a collector you can tell when someone's really in it as a collector or when someone's in it kinda just looking for an opportunity which you know nothing wrong with that there's participation participation at all ends of the spectrum but what we were finding was a lot of these guys were just really genuinely into it for a lot of different reasons some of them collected as kids some of them were just discovering the hobby and really loved it some of them you know saw it as kind of a a good distraction way to keep your mind busy during the course of a long season and i think as that evolved sort of the idea of focusing resources at our company on that evolved as well i love that does it maybe like in my mind maybe it's because it's trout and bobby witt and it's like the moments that have been captured regarding a prospect getting their bowman chrome super from a fan who pulled it and arranging that it feels like this has trended more on the baseball side initially is is that what you what you have seen is it evolving into the other sports or is it just like this was captured online with baseball instantly but it's kinda been going around with other sports and segments i think you definitely saw it first and foremost with baseball and it kinda made the most sense you know when you think of sports cards traditionally you think of baseball cards right you know baseball's had a connection with baseball cards going back decades and you know basketball cards didn't really become a popular thing until the nineteen nineties football cards didn't become a popular thing until the nineties two thousands baseball cards were part of american culture going back to you know the forties fifties sixties throughout so it it was kind of a little more natural i think with baseball another reason you saw such heavy participation you know we've talked to mlb players about this and they've seconded it it's such a long season and there's so much downtime and you know we've talked to you know we talked to some guys from a couple different teams that were in the playoffs the last couple years you know just a few weeks ago a few of the toronto blue jays were here visiting psa when they were in town playing the angels and they were talking about last year during their world series run you know before alcs games they were in there participating in breaks in the clubhouse as a team and like it became like this one this like team bonding thing where like a bunch of guys from the team would buy into the same break and they'd huddle around and watch it or it's also a distraction you know you think about playoff baseball it's so stressful it's a good way to just unplug your brain for a few hours before a game or a few minutes so it started there but but i think you've just kinda slowly seen it grow in the public eye so like you look at the nfl for example right it's amazing how many football players are into pokemon cards i don't know what's behind that but you know maybe it's the fact that a lot of these guys are in their twenties when they were kids you know they were really into pokemon cards because pokemon was huge at the time and then they reconnected with it the same way for me as a nineties kid reconnecting with you know baseball or basketballs or footballs a little more natural so just a lot of different things and and one other thing we've really noticed is it's one of the things that's interesting for me is to pay attention to what different athletes collect and it typically falls into a couple different buckets there's like the bucket of collecting stuff of yourself almost as a time capsule of your career a collection to build for your family which is really cool oh there's a lot of baseball guys who collect in person autos of guys they either play with or compete against we saw a couple of players at the end of last season send in bulk orders of just autographed cards that they collected during the course of the season and then the idea of guys like rarely collect their outside of those two buckets they don't really collect their own sport very much it's almost like you see a lot of baseball collectors will collect football cards or or pokemon cards you know football players collecting pokemon basketball players collecting football there's a lot of just like interesting crossover so yeah it's just it's very fascinating to watch unfold in real time that's very interesting the thing i think about as you were talking is something that maybe hasn't been brought up with the hobby but like a signal that we could have all seen before this became a emerging part of the industry where people like you have roles that are servicing this side of it is like just like it really started with like i feel like soccer mhmm and the exchange of jerseys and then obviously that went to the nfl and it just bleeds over it's like you hear it all the time it's like these players are chasing certain players that are playing against jerseys so naturally like that just you'd have to imagine is the same type of you know collector gene they might apply to sports cards and trying to build out a player set of someone they're competing against or someone on their team or maybe someone in a different sport yeah absolutely and you know i i there's also just kinda like the competitive angle to it also you know these guys are at the top of their professions in terms of the competitive piece of it and there's there's something cool about you know chasing something super rare that you know look your access using your access to your advantage you know being able to you know maybe there's a a rare red refractor out of five of a guy you're playing against but what if i have the only one that's been signed in person and like just different different things like that so that's been kinda cool to lean into and just you know and then connecting it with psa you know a lot of these guys love the idea of having this stuff authenticated holdered you know preserved we've seen some guys build really cool displays of psa slabs and things like that so there there's been a lot of there's everybody the one thing that's been really cool to see is there's really no one way for these guys to collect they've all found different unique ways to do it and that's been really fun to partner with them on along the way of kinda helping them evolve their collections helping educate them as they as they collect that's that's been something that's been really eye opening is a lot of these guys are just like everybody else getting into the hobby you kinda get in and you're you're kinda feeling things out but you know just like any other collector they're dedicating time and resource to it and you kinda learn evolve your tastes evolve your focuses as time goes and that's just really cool to see well i think one way you've described it just in our conversations you know offline is just organic and just like you mentioned the example and just him talking about it publicly and i'm sure like members of the team at psa observe these trends and you know might be grading his cards and then you eventually see it enough where you're like okay there's something here so before we or last time we spoke you were on the marketing team you were working in comms and social i'm curious like were you privy to the fact that an opportunity like you're in right now might exist like talk a little bit about like the early stages before maybe the formal role in job description was created you know it it kinda i will say this a little over a year ago this this role kinda came out of nowhere and found me i you know i'll say this i i came into psa in twenty twenty one like you said i i came on onto the team and i was working on social social media and content primarily to start but you know obviously saw this opportunity with you know athletes in the hobby to really help our brand and elevate our brand and started doing some of those outreaches you know dming athletes who we saw participating in the hobby and artists we saw participating in the hobby directly from our accounts and and forming those relationships building those relationships and you know before you know it we've built this whole you know to use an old school term like an old a whole rolodex of just these guys who we've been in touch with were starting to help them get submissions into psa some of them were starting to work with on a partnership level and then it sort of evolved as you know we just kinda had more and more visible opportunities with athlete and artist partners that it was kind of proposed a little over a year ago this is something we should you know put you know a role together for and you know i just to say it like i i was kind of tapped on the shoulder and asked if it was something i'd be interested in because i was already doing so much of it kind of on my own to expand my previous role so it was a really natural transition over to this role for me and you know spent about the first you know couple months feeling out like okay what does this program look like now and there's a bunch of different tentacles to it now you know we have the athletes who we work with you know kinda off the radar helping them just in general with submissions and building their collections we have some who we work with on you know on the marketplace side of our business who we're helping them utilize the the vault and ebay marketplace to evolve their collections and then you know other programs that i've helped kinda formalize in the last year most notably the psa autograph series which is a private signing series that we now run both on the sports and the tcg pop culture side where we're bringing in athletes and artists for private signings where we're building campaigns and and having submission windows where customers have couple months to send site send an item in for an athlete to sign and then not only is it getting signed but it's getting authenticated graded returned to the customer in one all in one process so there's just a lot of different ways you could take this and that's been really fun is you know i i showed up and had i i call it a it was a blank canvas i have a giant whiteboard on my wall here and it it was just fun to start playing around on there with what we wanna do and i feel like it's really starting to find its traction in the last six months or so i know like we we even though it's sports cards and it's fun and we love it and we're collectors too like it's a really fun space to work and mhmm i think you you you try to be as professional as possible but like was there any sort of like intimidation factor there like these are the guys and gals that like you have seen play games you have rooted for like and now you're trading messages with them about sports cards like were was there any intimidation factor that you had to overcome or did what did it just come natural to you it's weird to say it but it kinda came natural the fur so to back it up a a step the first you know fifteen years of my professional career i spent you know my first decade as a professional sports journalist sports writer on a beat covering high profile teams and so like i was kinda indirectly i was kind of already around athletes and and in it you know kinda you know around them and and speaking with them a lot and then i moved over onto the kind of a more marketing pr content side and i worked in professional boxing for five six years and i was working directly with athletes all the time directly with you know celebrity guests we had coming to events all the time and i almost i'm not gonna say the word desensitized but i just kinda became comfortable with it and you know knowing how to kinda interact with with professional athletes and you know etcetera so i'll say this it sounds kinda weird but like i can't think of a single instance where i've found myself like starstruck or anything like that because i feel like i've just i kinda got a little sense that's that's a long time ago in my career so but honestly that's what you find when working with professional athletes is these guys are just they're for the most part they're just normal people like the rest of us and you know it's really cool i think collecting is such a cool connector because you really see these guys interact with a hobby the same way you do and even though their life professionally is so much different than yours or any maybe anyone else you know and and they live a totally different kind of life the way that they interact with the hobby is the same way that you do and i always find that just to be so humanizing cool so yeah i feel like the hobby's presence in these interactions really makes it easier to just you know have these normal just interactions and relationships on those fronts i'm i'm curious like it sounds like you you were based on your experience which is probably what one of the reasons and probably you being good at your last role and you having this sort of experience with athletes that you're tapped on the shoulder and so you're you you felt like you're already getting into this but i'm sure like with any role in any industry like there's probably some things that might have surprised you out of the gates because it is a start up role like no one has had this role at psa before you and i'm curious like has there been anything just out of the gates that stepping in and as you're like you got a blank canvas you're trying to map like i should do this this didn't work or i should do more of that this really worked like has there been anything that has stood out and surprised you it's a great question in terms of just things that surprised me i think i was a little surprised and i've already talked about it but a little bit but i was so surprised with the level of authenticity that and and kinda humility that a lot a lot of professional athletes come into the hobby with you know i think on the surface you would maybe think guys come in and they're like i'm i'm one of the best in the world at this field i'm gonna step into this hobby and just you know approach it different than anyone else and that guys come into this with just like a general just curiosity and wanna learn it and and i think a lot of them just find that i that way of reconnecting with something they either once loved or something they they can have a genuine passion outside of that with and i i think that kind of surprised me a little bit like and i think the level of creativity that you see from the way these guys collect lends itself to other ideas that we can lean into so like for example when you know you see guys that are really getting into collecting in person autographs like then educating them hey when you're getting a guy to sign this card here's how to like prep the surface for a signature here's the kind of pens you should be using here's the best you know all those little things but that's been really i i think that's that's been the cool thing the surprising thing is as we've had these ideas of how to expand this program having just the comfort to be able to pitch that to these guys and how open they are to you know trying cool things based on the access they have has been really refreshing has it been intimidating i guess is the way to put it has it been mostly like there has been all of this exposure in of the hobby and people know psa and it's translated down to individuals who maybe collected as a kid and now they're athletes and they're like returning to it because they see an opportunity in collecting and nostalgia and all this is that like this i think about the boomerang path that many of us have been on like we collected as kids and then now we reentered and now we're take we have our lumps and we finally find the thing that we love and we go pursue it like is it is it similar for athletes or has there been any like athletes that have come in your direction who are like you would classify as like okay this person knows exactly what they're doing they've been doing this for a while and like they've got maybe a level of sophistication i guess like the question i'm asking is that like more like onboarding people who are returning to the hobby or are there athletes who are just like have been just like seriously collecting for a while like what's what's the makeup look like more newcomers sure the guys who you know it's funny because you think about what it takes to get to that level in your career as a professional athlete you're like so much of your late youth and teenage years and then early twenties is spent focusing singularly on that one thing like you don't have time for hobbies most of the time right so a lot of these guys who did collect earlier corrected collected when they were really young so they're they're just now getting back into it and and learning you know the same way we do you know you you're kinda like checking out all the stuff that's out asking questions figuring out what you like and then you you know eventually find your lane i think i'm surprised how fast some of these guys find their lane you know that could be for a variety of different reasons but you know it is cool to watch as like these guys get into their specific lanes and then really try to expand on them you know the guys who like i was saying the example of guys who get really into in person autos who then like take it another step of like how can i make these items really unique what kind of inscriptions could i have them do for me and and things like that it's it's a little of both but a lot of athletes coming into the space are general you know newcomers to the hobby but one thing that's really impressive is of all the athletes we've worked with here in the last several years who've been getting into the hobby and learning a lot of them haven't like dropped off you know that was a whole thing in the hobby in general a lot of people got in for the first time ever in twenty twenty twenty one and then just kinda pieced out a couple years later like that hasn't really happened a lot of these guy a lot of them have like really stuck with it which means they got into it probably with really like i think really really good intention and and as something they really wanted to embrace and they really have and the community's been great with them too like the community loves it yeah i i think what's lot not lost on me and probably the the listeners is the fact that traditionally when i think about athletes and cards i think about them getting a big box of cards from the manufacturer to to sign autographs and i also think about like the rookie photo shoots and being a part of that and seeing their cards so i'm i'm just curious like did they you have to hear like some commentary from these athletes about the cards that they're on and they're holding like what's that dynamic like because each of those moments i feel like is a trip down memory lane which can open up the doors for like oh on this day i was doing x or during this game i remember y like i'm sure that's part of like the natural conversation that you're having with these kind of on a regular basis yeah like there's been a couple guys that we've worked with who you know former nfl players where we'll have you know who have their own cards that they wanna do some signings of so that they can grade and encapsulate them for their family friends etcetera and you would be shocked how you'd look at like a they're signing like a two thousand two tops chrome base card and it's them warming up before a game and it's like oh i remember that that was in new england because that was the only game i ever wore those sleeves in my career and here it is twenty five years later and they remember that detail there's a lot of really cool stuff like that and i i thought one of the coolest things i know you guys talked about it in your podcast you and you and pac last week about the rookie premier for the nfl pa which you know the nfl pa has been doing for twenty five plus years but they've evolved it now with you look at the fanatics involvement and like having like card collector two there doing content on camera with like fernando mendoza and those guys having these conversations about cards you never saw this before and i'm a big rookie premier like guy you know this i'm of like the autographs i've been fascinated by this whole thing for twenty plus years but it what i saw a couple weeks ago when they were doing it i'm like this is the next step like this is how you really get these guys engaged and you know you saw a video coming out of that weekend of those guys sitting around a conference table you know opening packs together and whatnot i mean that's how you get these guys like that's how you kinda wet the appetite of and get and see who's interested in you know maybe exploring this a little deeper that i i'm pretty sure that didn't happen until a year ago yeah and i wanted to get into that just like the trickle down effect of fanatics and how that has maybe translated into what you're seeing in your role like undeniably ever since they took over the licenses the one thing that no one can deny is that athletes are more integrated in sports card culture than ever before mhmm you're you've got legends like barry sanders on debut tops chrome brakes shout out tombstone collectibles they did that you're seeing obviously tom brady doing videos basically saying like you know if you rip a if you rip a brady auto out of chrome and you pull it in a card vault store like i'm gonna facetime you and it's just like crazy like it's like this is stuff like people would dream of mhmm and fanatics is really coordinating all this i'm curious like based on them taking over nba and nfl license athletes being front and center like how has that trickled down into like what you've seen in your role yeah i mean i can't praise fanatics enough for what they've done on that front and and tapping back into something we said earlier what they've done so well is that they're bringing the athletes to the forefront with their with a lot of their executions who are genuinely into this i feel like as a collector you can tell when someone is just you know they're doing something because they're a spay a paid spokesperson for it person when they genuinely care about it and the way that they've really leaned in with athletes who are like genuinely fascinated and wanna take part in the hobby has been really cool and i think you know they've tried a lot of different things as they should i was at the first fanatics fest two years ago i didn't go last year but i mean even just the integration of being on the show floor and seeing rob gronkowski walking around near you with a giant gaggle of people like looking at tables and and displays i mean that was just cool you know so i i think what fanatics is doing and and and the way that they are just really it's it's kinda you know cliche to say just bringing people closer to the game and to the athletes with a lot of these things that they're doing it can't help but have a good effect elsewhere because you know you know i started collecting cards in the nineties and i collected throughout high school you know in the late nineties and like it was not like the cool thing to do in the late nineties it was it was basically me and my best friend growing up and like i don't i didn't know anybody else who collected outside of us and the the the regulars we saw at our monthly show in suburban chicago and now it's just become so mainstream and that's just the evolutionary next step of it now the athletes themselves taking part know what you saw in the last five years was like the evolution of it becoming mainstream and now you're seeing the next step of that and i think it's only gonna continue to grow and i really don't see how that has a negative effect or doesn't trickle down and just get more people curious period yeah do you do you see i don't know like what what have your observations been on like the consumer side i know you're mostly you know building and managing the relationships with the athletes but like have you seen any sort of impact like one signal for me that i've noticed is like the in the the tops chrome nba basketball and tops chrome football like i those like launches of the product and the athletes that were involved like they it just felt different and it felt big in a way where not just like hobby instagram or the communities that i'm involved with took note but it it really felt like you know i get a text from my dad or my mom being like hey did you see this on the news like tom brady was talking about top screen football so it just feels like those sorts of signals and things that i see like obviously have some trickle down effect on like us as collectors like what do you have any observations on things you've noticed regarding like athletes being involved and how that's impacted collectors or people who might be curious about collecting again i think you said it best it felt both of those product drops felt like events and i can't remember another product drop in my three decades of collecting that felt that way i really i really can't they just did it so differently and i thought it was really great because i had a couple of examples of the same thing you said you know i'm trying to remember there was one of tom brady's shops that opened i think it was my aunt called me she's like did you see that tom brady opened a card shop i mean this stuff is just it's it's spreading around different than it used to be and you know look i think i think there's gonna be growing pains for the hobby as it continues to surge the way it has but i mean i just see these as good steps in in the right in the you know just steps forward for everything because i do i do think that especially younger collectors my i have an eight year old nephew who started to get super into cards and i mean he reminds me of myself where like you know he can tell you you know we were we we were with him a a few weeks ago and you know every morning all he does is sit on you know youtube and pull up mlb tv's highlights from the night before and like telling me about who's been hitting really well and all that and but he sees these things too and and i think kids and younger collectors seeing these things that's how it's trickling down and connecting younger people to collecting earlier than or more i guess in a in a higher volume than before i i'm i have to believe that's the case i wanna make sure that i try to without prying see if i can get any sort of stories or moments from you from maybe the other side or behind the curtain and i understand like there's some confidentiality with with you and these relationships so i don't wanna put you in an uncomfortable spot and have you share something you shouldn't but is there anything you can share about just like memorable moments of you in this roles and interaction you've had with athletes that like stand out to you that you can talk about yeah i mean you know there's been some stuff that's happened even somewhat in the public eye that we've been involved with that just like really were moments that made you feel like this just feels different and one that always comes to mind was you know there's a video on our on psa's youtube from it's probably three four years old now but when mike trout first started collecting and grading with us you know mike has a pedigree collection trout family collection on his cards of himself that he's been collecting for himself his sons his family going forward and when he came to pick up his first submission of those we had a surprise for him and we had commissioned to get a custom box made for his personal collection that had like trout family collection branding on it it was this beautiful wood design it had like the it was designed on the top had a a glass or a see through glass top where you could display cards but over it it had the ribbon from the two thousand eleven tops tops update design which was his rookie card and it said trout family collection across it and so when he got here we had him in our content studio and we had it under a you know a little black cloth and we had him do like an unveil on camera and you could genuinely tell he was like oh my god this is awesome and like his reaction to it was you like you couldn't fake that and i i was sitting there at the moment thinking like this is a guy who's the best baseball player of our generation he's seen everything like i can't imagine a lot of things like impress him anymore at this point but like he was genuinely like taken back by just like what that meant to him and what that collection meant to him and i always draw back to that as because like you said there's been other moments like that where you know we work with you know some nba players who rip a lot of product and like we've been with them when like they hit really big cards and have like the same genuine reaction that you or i would have if you hit a one of one or something crazy and it that's kind of my drawback to like the hobby can really make people feel different and evoke emotions that you know you can't that you only get from a few other places so that's been really cool and it's kinda like something when i think about our role in helping you helping athletes who collect it's kinda like what you're chasing is helping them like create these moments for themselves that like really bring genuine joy and just a genuine connection to this hobby that they're now involved with that's awesome love the trout story on the other side of it obviously when you have high profile individuals that are talking about cards promoting it like is there anything you see that's maybe at risk or any like is this sustainable like that and this is a question i think we just in general in the hobby feel right now where it's like man this has been going on at this level for a long time and continues to elevate and there's more volume more high sales more everything and i think it's this perfect storm of all of these factors that are coming together at one point and athletes i think play a big role in it because they have large megaphones huge social platforms and people follow what they're doing like do you see just based on your role in this moment of time any risk that we have with athletes being involved at at the hobby and like how do you think about making sure that if there are risks like anything you can in your role like you're trying to help mitigate that i wouldn't say risks so much i think our focus is more on in the areas of this program where we are connecting athletes with collectors and with customers through product and through you know activations i think really promoting the strength of what our brand can bring to it as kind of that bridge and i go back to the autograph series i think that's a that's a a perfect example of you know you know this like in person autographs and autographs on rookie cards like ten years ago that was such a taboo thing right and now it's become this big thing that people are really chasing and and integrating into the way they collect so the way we're building out like the autograph series with bringing you know legendary athletes like you know we had reggie jackson recently we have helen iverson coming up later this month we had magic johnson at the beginning of the year giving customers and collectors a way to get access to something like that i think is really cool and i think it's really unique in that you know like you said as the as the hobby scales up as you know more and more people more and more money get into this you know we see examples of it all the time there's that always invites bad actors right and just like just different things like that and i think where we can really lean into i always try to stay connected to the core of what our business is authentication authentic authenticity and you know so as we're building the autograph series program giving people access to like authentic you know autographs from legendary athletes and then when it comes to athletes we work with this is something i've really staked to since we started working with athletes years ago was i really if we're gonna work on a brand front of you know athletes that we're gonna partner with on say like creating content and doing things like that i really wanna do it with guys who are authentic with the hobby and are authentic participants in the hobby not just guys who are wanting to be a paid spokesman or a paid spokesperson you know people who are genuinely into it and and will come across authentic to our customers and other collectors because if not like how are we really you know what what is that really servicing the community with if we're not so that's i i kinda try to stay tethered within our brand to that whole idea of authentic and authenticity with everything we do just to make sure that as we're scaling this up we're scaling it the right way and with the right intentions i love it great thoughts maybe ryan as we round the corner on this conversation i'd love to get like your vision of like looking down the road looking you know several years based on the early signals and what you see like what athlete involvement looks like yeah in the hobby you know five years from now like what do you see this becoming are we just getting started like what's your perspective wait it's it's really hard to tell because i mean some of the things we see athletes doing now i couldn't have seen coming four or five years ago i think that's kind of the exciting part about it is who knows how this is gonna evolve i think what you are gonna see more of is like i just keep going back to the genuine connection between athletes and collectors and like something you you were talking about earlier you always see these these examples of you know collectors who pull like a rare card of an athlete and then they find a way to connect with the athlete make a deal in person for some kind of trade i think you're gonna see a lot more of that as we go forward and i think you're just gonna see just like you've seen athletes get more creative with the way they're collecting as time goes and and with their access and the ability to connect with the hobby so easily i think you're gonna see collectors get a lot more creative with the way that they collect and the way they try to get access to athletes through the hobby i think you know i'm really bullish on the idea of like i i've really grown into this space now of like how fascinating in person autographs and know making collectibles really unique can be i think you're gonna start seeing more and more collectors leaning into that and i think with that said more athlete participation in the hobby is a good thing especially athletes who genuinely wanna come into this to connect with the community such a fun conversation it's such an interesting topic to think about and i i think it feels like we're just getting really started and it's awesome to be able to gather some perspective from you ryan someone who is working at a major business in this industry servicing athlete collectors on a daily basis ryan this won't be the last time we talk but as always man appreciate the time likewise brett i i love this every time i'm gonna go back and finish the football card pod now hey just make sure you tell your damn friends okay i tell everyone and i always take part in card callouts yes i i see those those bangers and yeah if maybe hey for anyone who's not plug the ig because you you know you're working for a a major hobby business but you're also a collector and you share your card so plug your ig so people can find you mostly modern collector is me on insta oh that's my card instagram i'm a little embarrassed though because i've really slacked on posting in there the last six to eight months so i've been really cognizant of that lately so i'm gonna i'm actually doing some fun things i kinda wanna like redo a whole showcase of like my personal collection so i'm gonna start working on that in the next couple months but yeah mostly modern collectors where you can find me and connect with me on there yes and you you might see some sweet we talked rookie premier some red ink autos that that's full that's on there for sure i got i got two that i actually haven't shown on instagram yet go yeah these are because i just got these both back from reholder service but speaking of which two thousand one my one of my favorite years what a combo what a draft class what a duo two hall of famers with the first and thirty second pick that's crazy tell tell the list tell people who are listening what cards you show you have that was a two thousand one tops rookie premier autos of drew brees heading into the hall of fame in two months and lt best running back of the generation wow i yeah if i have not seen a a more significant rookie autograph collection than ryan so make sure you check it out ryan appreciate you catching up man talk to you soon alright take care