We are back with another episode of Passion of Profession brought to you by my good friends at eBay.

And I'm excited because one of those friends is joining in today's conversation, and someone who I've been working with behind the scenes for, over a year, which is kind of crazy. And I've been trying to pull him on this show.

He's a busy guy, but we're gonna get into, his story and what he's working on at eBay. But in today's conversation, I'm joined by Mike Net, who is the general manager for trading cards and sports memorabilia at eBay.

And I wanted him to come on to kinda introduce himself to the stacking slabs audience, talk about collector history and involvement at eBay. But without their due, Mike, welcome. How are you? Hey, Brett.

Thrilled to be here and excited to be on the show. Excited to have you and be working on this together. I maybe, like, off script, but just out of your curiosity, we've done I know you've listened to most, if not all of these.

We've done almost an an entire year, basically, of conversations for Passion Profession. I remember us, like, game planning about this series, and I think we're both very excited.

And it's really become one of my favorite pieces of content I've worked on all year, just entrepreneurial stories of top sellers, just people in the industry.

Like, when when we started this, what were your expectations? I guess, what were you expecting out of this?

Did you learn anything? I know it's kind of a broad brush question, but we've had a lot of these chats and a lot of information shared. I'm just curious on kinda your reaction of, a year of these, in the can.

Well, first, Brett, you are the best in the business at this, and that's the reason why I wanted to work with you so much is because your interest and passion for cards, it's about all the things that are great about them.

It's not necessarily about the prices or the money you can make.

It's about your connection to the sport and the athlete and nostalgia. And so that's what's been amazing. And I knew you would bring that out with eBay and our connections, how we're working together.

But then as we it's evolved and it's become about sellers, which has been fantastic. I've learned a ton about the sellers, my business. I've gained ideas from listening and hearing to the sellers.

So it's really cool to hear you bring out it's always been about collecting and the collectors, but they hear you go and find these stories and pull them out and learn more about the businesses and the sellers, it's been amazing to watch and learn about that other side of the hobby, and I hope it's been been good for you and for your for your listeners as well.

Yeah. It's been a a lot of fun, and it's been a a a lot of fun working with, your team in eBay. And we're gonna get into your kinda career trajectory and how you ended up doing what you're doing at eBay.

But maybe we'll just start here and talk about cards and collecting. I would imagine, you know, many of us as kids got into cards, but let's let's let's learn from you.

Like, how did you get involved with cards? When did it start? Yeah. Well, that'll be our launching off point. Yeah. It it was my dad. He loved sports.

He loved cards. And so he was the one who introduced me and got me into it. He'd always tell me stories about his favorite teams, the Chicago White Sox, the Chicago Bears, and then he'd tell me about his collections too.

So he always used to tell me that he had nineteen fifty eight to 62 complete sets. Then we that it has some amazing cards. Now all those cards were lost in a flood at some point.

He had none of those. But we would go to the local shop, local, card shop every week. I'd take my dollar allowance, buy two packs for 50¢. Dad would kick in the tax, and we'd go home.

We'd look at it. We'd collect. And I have this I actually have this memory of him. He would always go through the cards. He would take them, and he kinda reversed the order. And I remember watching and saying, oh, man.

Now though that order is is backwards, and I have to go back after he left the room. I have to go reverse the order. But I never said anything to him just because, it's I enjoyed hanging out, doing those things, looking at cards.

He'd tell me stories about the players and and and being with them, and and it was just that was, being with my dad, doing all sports things.

Of course, friends came in, and then we go to local card shows together and things like that. But, yeah, that's probably where it started. So, obviously, there's a lot of memories and memories with your dad.

And I just think about all the stories and where cards can take us. When you think back to maybe those early days, what did collecting kinda give you in that early stage of your life?

Yeah. I think it was all about those connect because it connections with my dad, and then there was I had three friends that we would always collect together.

And then their parents were into it, their dads were into it, so we go to the shows.

And it's kinda funny. I remember you and I have a mutual connection in Ryan Green. And Ryan and I met in the hobby, but Ryan grew up five miles north of me. And I remember all of a sudden, I had this memory a cup last year.

Actually, during this year, and I text him. He said, do you remember Plaza Verde? It was this outdoor strip mall, and the they would always have athlete signings every couple months.

And I just all of a sudden had this memory of going with my three buddies, their parents, standing in line, waiting for autographs from maybe it was Otis Wilson or Dan Hampton or Steve McMichael.

And all those great things of going places, being with friends, and family, and then now sharing with people.

And I said, Ryan, do you did you he said, yep. I remember. I went to all every single one of those signings, and we were laughing because I'll bet we were He might have been in line 10 places in front of me or vice versa.

We passed together at some points in our life, and now to share some of those memories and share collecting today too is is great.

So much, has changed, but so much still stays the same from eras of collecting. And I know, like, your view on the hobby, the industry, the participants is very wide.

Like, you see a lot of things, and I'm I'm just curious just do you still see kind of that version of yourself and the way you process and the reasons why you collect in, like, collectors maybe at that age today? I do.

And I think that's the base and the most important of it is the people who are interested in cars and collecting to connect them to what it is, whether it's the athlete or a character, or doing those things with friends and family.

That has to be the base and the the biggest part and the most important part of the hobby because everything else kind of extends from there. And that's the reason that's what I was talking about earlier.

That's why I just love listening to your podcast and your show is because that's what's important to you. And you bring out those stories and you talk about it, so positively.

Let's get into your career and kinda moving from that passion in the early days, connecting with your group of friends and connecting with your dad, waiting in lines to get autographs around cards.

You've you've had a, very interesting career just in terms of roles and brands you've worked for.

You know, I I I've I've I've kinda known because we know each other, but digging back on your LinkedIn, I'm curious kind of what opportunities, like, you working at Pepsi or you working at Amazon, like, experience that you work with as well as helped you as you started working in the industry?

Yeah. I would say there's probably maybe two skill sets that come to mind and that's being first and foremost for the customer and working from there first and then knowing the business really cold.

And maybe it's because those things are universal or those are the things that I learned, but I found those things have been so incredibly helpful in working in this space because it all starts with the interest that collectors have in the hobby.

And then to be able to understand everything that's going on from what's selling really well, to what people are looking at, to how prices are changing, to what modem or channel people are looking at the most is super important.

Those things are great great to meld together what you observe in the data and then what you hear in anecdotes, learn from people out at shows, hear from customer service teams and things like that.

And when you can marry those things really well together, those have been had the most helpful at eBay and and earlier in my career as well. The so that element, I wanna maybe do a, drill down a little bit on that.

The it's it's always so challenging from a, like, analysis and looking at things ahead, trying to marry the data side and what you're seeing in spreadsheets or reports that are being given to you, combined with, like, customer feedback reaction and putting those two things together.

Like, I feel like I've I know you pretty decently well, although we've never worked together. We kind of work together.

I'm curious, like, how you have taken those kinda two sides of, you know, the the marketer brain or the where you're analytical or just trying to get kind of the brand in the the gut field directly from the customer?

Like, how do you balance those two things when you're trying to, you know, do research or you're trying to make, you know, a a business related decision?

Yeah. It's probably exposure to both of those. In the first part of my career, I was at I was at Pepsi, and I worked a lot of the time on accounts like Walmart and Target.

And one of the things that we were required to do was you had to go do a market audit. And what that meant was you had to go to the store. You had to count the displays, the linear feet, all these different metrics.

But the what what was really important was actually going out and seeing how customers would do things and watch and react and I remember we had this question. What happens when you're out of stock on something?

Well, we thought they would go buy I worked on Gatorade. I thought people would go buy something else. But, logically, what actually happened, if you you watch them, they're like, oh, you don't have fruit punch.

You don't have red. Okay. Well, I'll just get yellow. Or you see people bending over to pick the the largest pack up. You guys, oh, we're putting those things on the bottom, and you those things are very observable.

And in ecommerce and at eBay, you can't watch some of the excitement of someone finishing an auction or finding a card or the frustration from not being able to do what they wanna do.

And so it's going out to card shops. It's visiting shows.

It's talking to our customer service team and also staying really in tune with your podcast. I actually have three or four different podcasts I'm listening to. There's a YouTube recap that I'm watching from, from different folks.

And then looking at the data as well, and by being exposed to both those sides to it, there's oftentimes where there's analysis that could come through, and you can make those those connections and be able to to do some things that are really good.

I I'm a big fan of putting out the message that, like, everybody in the industry or everybody in the hobby who's, like, a collector and a participant, everyone has different professional skill sets, and those professional skill sets can be used to, you know, make your process better as a collector, or you can contribute to hobby businesses because there's a lot of hobby businesses out there who need really smart people with sharp skills.

When did you know, you got this experience from Pepsi, you got this experience working in Amazon, working directly, on what customers are doing and pulling those insights.

When did you when did the light bulb go off in your head that you you when you knew, like, hey. This might be something that I can apply to a business that's in the industry, in the sports card space?

Yeah. It was I was at Amazon. I've been at Amazon for about ten years. I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do next, and it was more of trying to figure out where I wanted to go. And I thought, okay.

I wanna do something either good or fun, something good good for the world or something that I really enjoy. And as I'm talking, Michael Michael Osaki, who is a one of the the the best sports appraiser in the country in the world.

He's a good friend of mine that I've known since high school. He's in my wedding, and he said, hey. I I want you to talk to a few of the folks at PSA.

And at the time, PSA had just been acquired. The vision was to turn them and have a little bit more of a tech bent. There's a few folks that were in Seattle at the time, and so I started talking to them and things just started evolving.

I talked to Steve Sloan. Steve Sloan, who's an adviser, dear friend in the hobby. He hired me into the business, and it went from there.

So I think it was a combination of having a good background and understanding of business, being a collector in my past as well, and and and and probably most importantly have just having good connections and a good network to be able to introduce me to the right folks.

So if you're keeping track at home, we had Pepsi, we had Amazon, PSA, and we haven't even talked about eBay.

Maybe, like, during that time at PSA, you're getting integrated and you you know the industry, right, from a collecting perspective, and you're trying to learn it from a business perspective.

Was there a moment during your run at PSA early when you realized, like, the way what you have learned through your career experience and maybe just how you're wired from a leadership perspective that you were, actually a fit and you could add a lot of value to kind of what PSA was doing and and what the industry needed in that moment?

Yeah. I I I guess it was just being able to dive a little bit deeper into the industry because I think what's fascinating about our industry, it's more interesting than anything I've ever worked on in my life.

Not only is it fun because it's trading cards and we all like to collect, and we're talking about this impact of sports on trading cards or maybe it's a content or a a new Netflix show that is driving something there.

That's amazing and it's interesting.

But then the business side, there's a hobby within the hobby of watching what's happening with acquisitions or changes in you've got just the layers of the business from opening cards and ripping on the primary, selling on the secondary.

Now you can sell via live. You can buy into breaks. There's the grading element to that. There's a lot there's the raw element to it.

There's there's set collecting. There's player collecting. There's so many different elements to it, not to mention pricing. Pricing is so different from consumer electronics or anything else out there.

The layers to this and the complexity of this is is terribly interesting, phenomenally interesting, and and it's you could there's so many different economic analysis and applications that come with all this that every single element is is a lot of fun, and probably that is what drew me to it is that the the nuance and layer to all this is something that you could study and be enthralled with for a long, long time.

I I wanna, like, stop, pause there for a minute, and just get your opinion on the industry happenings this year from a a business side, and the acquisitions.

Like, even without going through everything, whether what collectors has done, what eBay has done.

Like, I learned in a conversation I had with one of your colleagues, yesterday that I could get on eBay and I could get golden listings on on eBay. And and I was like, that's super cool.

And so it feels like we're at this pivotal point right now in our industry where there's a ton of there's acquisition happening. There's consolidation happening. There's a ton of growth. Cards are selling.

Like, in your seat looking at this year, like, how would you eve how do you even begin to contextualize all of the stories and all of the different business happenings that ultimately are all in place and will impact kind of collectors and collecting behavior?

Yeah. It's probably one of the great things about our industry right now is it's growing.

There's investment. People are interested. They wanna work in this this this area. There's competition, and all of those things lead to innovation in ways that we're trying to that the companies are trying to make the hobbies better.

And I think that that is what's helping to drive helps to drive things forward. I think the ultimate the most important thing is always the collector and doing things right there.

But, when you're looking at business and the investments and the acquisitions, all those things have to be in service of the collector for them to be successful.

And so I think with these different investments in different areas, the in innovations that are coming in, the the hobby's moving incredibly fast and evolving so quickly that it it makes for things that people are interested and can take different elements and go different ways with.

And so, ultimately, I hope and I believe that these things are all good for the hobby because the end goal is to make things a better place.

And when those things happen and there's competition, there's investment, it moves things forward at a at a really rapid pace.

Let's talk about your start at eBay. I remember I don't know if I've told you this, but I remember as someone who is constantly scanning everything that's happening with this industry regularly, probably too much.

I remember when the job description for your role was published, and I remember looking at it and being like, man, this is, like, a really cool role that's available right now. I wonder who's gonna end up in it.

And we had met, and it was so it was cool to see that. But, obviously, like, this like, the role you're in, overseeing trading cards and memorabilia is definitely, I would say, a lot of people would be like, this is kinda dream job.

What what when you stepped into the role, what surprised you maybe most about the trading card category at eBay? Probably the fact that it is that the sellers are so important and play a really big factor in driving the industry.

In the business that I had worked on before, there's a like, such a big focus on customer, and that's one of the probably one of the pieces of my experience in training that has really become really been helpful for me.

But coming to eBay, I saw some of this at Amazon, coming to eBay realizing how important the seller is, and we talk a lot here about there's two important sides to this marketplace.

There's the buyer side that that you and I have been talking a lot about in the first part of this podcast and that most of my career is talked about.

But the sell side is so important and truly, probably, I think, the biggest engine for driving it.

We have a great eBay. I think one of the greatest things we have is that we're the largest trading cards marketplace in the world, and that's driven by all the sellers, big and small.

We've got some giant sellers, and we've got such a long tail of the sellers that there are so many you can get cards from anybody.

Anybody can sell, But I was most surprised at how seller driven this has been and that we've we've have to pay attention and service both sides of our customers, and that's both the sellers as customers and the buyers as well.

When did you realize that how big of a stakeholder for you and your role and what you're looking to get accomplished that the seller side was?

And just like the makeup and profiling for the audience, this is a a majority of the people that we have hosted on this show this year learning from and having conversations with.

But when did you realize that group of seller stakeholders would be such a pivotal group in trying to help you get get accomplished what you needed to get accomplished as you were getting up and running at eBay?

The when I joined the team, we got some amazing leaders on the team that that I work with, and they were they in start when they said, hey.

The we gotta we gotta meet all the sellers. So on my team, we got Solen, Filadian, and Luke Meyer that are just amazing.

They're one of the things that they wanted to do when I started was, like, we gotta meet these sellers. And that was like, okay. That's that's where we're starting.

Okay. That that makes sense. I get it. And then we started talking to them, and I've had the chance to work with really big companies in my career. And you work I worked at Amazon with Kimberly Clark, Procter and Gamble, Sony, Sonos.

I worked at on the Gatorade account. And the mindset of the corporate businesses is very different than the entrepreneurs that are driving these, that are the who who are these sellers?

And you get down to the to to it in your podcast, but walking the operations that all these folks have and to see how they have found medium or small opportunities and pick them up and and just been able to find and develop businesses, and make great decisions for customers and for their business off of small insights or big insights.

The hustle and just unbelievable knowledge coming from the seller base that, like, interacting and seeing four sharp corners is a great one. I remember going to see them and they talked about I can't remember how many moves.

I don't wanna I wanna say four. Maybe it was five moves. They're moving every other year, and they're telling and explaining how they move, why they move, how big and small it was, some triggers that help them get to the next level.

But to hear those stories and those hustle of sole proprietorships, partnerships, people putting their money on the line to now get into the next place, get to the next place, that's been fascinating.

So I think that connection has been been huge. Yeah. I hope people understand who are listening.

My evolution in my perception of how eBay worked has changed dramatically this year, and learning about, these consignment operations in four sharp corners is a perfect example. Like, these are on very entrepreneurial nature.

They're very sophisticated from an operation perspective. There's so much inventory. And just to learn how people are doing what they're doing while pushing everything through eBay has certainly been, a a treat.

I obviously, I've known that eBay is the largest seller of trading cards in the world and but to understand, like, the the individuals who are helping drive this has been fun.

How knowing that you're, like, you're in one of the top categories and the largest seller of, trading cards working on at eBay.

Like, how do you take that into consideration when you're trying to make business decisions? Maybe help us understand how you think about your role in the volume of cards that are coming in and going out the door on a on a daily basis.

Yeah. It's it's it's astounding, and you never cease to be surprised how much incredible volume there is that's going.

I was in a conversation with someone yesterday, and just talking about how many cards are flowing through eBay into the hands of collectors is amazing.

But we we we we have to simplify where we can and stay grounded in the different principles we have. And so I think that we we we watch a couple of really important pillars.

And the first of those is the the selection, the assortment we have It constantly driving and pushing to make sure that we have more cards than as many cards as we can and that we're growing the amount of cards in the selection.

Amazes me when I look at the number of live listings growing every week or passing these different milestones. That has to be number one. We want collectors to come to eBay first because they know they can find everything.

So finding, selection is really important in assortment. The the the other pillar is trust and making sure that we're we're we're a place where people can come and they know that they can trust.

They're gonna buy. They're gonna get what they need. And if if something happens, then we're gonna be able to help them.

And it's it's on both sides too. We gotta have great trust both on the sell side and the buy side. And then there's the experience, and the the both sides of that is the buyer and seller experience.

And so when our team is looking and making decisions, we are always trying to ground them in the pillars of what we do, which is the selection, the trust, and the experience.

That's, amazing. What what's it like working for a company that you know and you know this from just hearing this, and I'll be a case study for you and attest to it.

Like, when we get off of this, recording and I'm gonna go make my lunch, like, I'm gonna have my phone open, and I'm gonna pull up an eBay, and I'm gonna be checking my saved searches.

And I'm not the only one doing it. Like, I need to start tracking, like, how many times I pull up up open the app just to check, what's available.

But I don't know. Like, how does knowing that there's so many of us doing that, how does how does that influence kinda how you think about the the whole experience on the app?

It it's, it's amazing, and it it's it's also knowing that there's small changes that can lead to big things or obviously big change.

But knowing that's really important, it's these are these are important things to people's to what people love to do.

And so that philosophy of starting with, the collector and figuring out what they need or even starting with the seller too.

I'll give you, an example, and it maybe relates to a bit too. So how do you stay in touch with some of the both the the customer as a whole and looking at the numbers?

And there's one thing that I I had always noticed in you you're part of an auction, and the the our push notifications would happen at fourteen I think it's fourteen, and you and I have to tell you a lot because I think we've talked about this before.

Fourteen and nine minutes. And I'm sitting here setting an alarm on my watch to try and get that one because I because I and because I've forgotten more so many times.

And I I think we kinda changed it. We gotta change it. And it was I believe it was, a card ladder show where they're talking about how that bothered them and how they missed something.

And it was that that triggered going to our one of our team to say, hey. Why do push notifications come at nine to fourteen minutes when so much bid activity getting into numbers?

The bid activity when we look at it happens with two minutes, one minutes, thirty seconds left. And we I I put forward the idea of let's get into live activity.

So people are familiar with Uber and how now when you catch an Uber, even flights now are doing this too where it's ever present on your phone. And that's something that we launched this year on on iOS was live activities.

This was a great connection because the iOS was tested, and the amount of increase in bids that were happening and purchases that were happening because people could see it.

And now you're not forgetting about it, but it's ever present, and the reminder comes at two minutes. And so you're not missing out on a card and being frustrated by that.

And and that is a great example of hearing anecdotes from a customer, working it through, finding something that's really right for, the customer and and right for our business too.

And and here we are at this great innovation that led to people not checking their phones more often than were even before because because it's there for them and they wanna win that auction, and now they they can do that a lot easier.

I felt I feel like that update was meant for me.

That that's, like, my favorite eBay update ever because the the most gut wrenching thing that happens, and this happens maybe three to five times a year where most of the bidding is done in the evening.

I'm a dad of two small kids. I'm working all day. I'm waiting to put in my bed in the evening.

I'm on the couch, and I'll I'll fall asleep. And I'll I'll wake up and be like, oh, I can't believe I fell asleep. I really wanted that card. And now just to have that take over the screen, and it's like, we get so distracted.

Like, we'll jump all over apps and do a bunch of things. But to know that's, like, front and center, especially when it's cards I really need, it's like, that is an update from a company that I can truly appreciate.

So if anyone else hasn't experienced that yet, you you need to because it's a it's it's been a lifeline for me as a, collector. It's it is a great and we were it it good. And then you see them all the time.

We were we were watching the mayor we're at a friend's house watching the Mariners playoffs, and I got my daughter my daughter's leaned up against me. My wife's behind me. I I get a get a reminder, and I'm like, I need to get this.

For some reason for some reason, I like I I kinda like to bid alone, and I had all these people around me. And I had to walk we're in a friend's house. I had to walk into the kitchen. You know, I was like, where are you going?

I'm like, to bid on a to bid on a card. He's like, why are you going to the and then I I I I ended up missing the auction, but it was a rather funny interaction because I saw it, and then I had that.

For some reason, I felt like I had to go to the other room to make the bid on the card.

But, yeah, it, it is it's it's fun to see it, and that's it's a helpful one for sure. I wanna dig into some signals and insights in what 2025 told you.

Obviously, it's been a a tremendous year of growth across the board from of from volume and then just, like, individual cards and what they're selling for. And I I think we've talked about this at time.

Like, I'm pulling reports all the time in card ladder, and I'm astounded sometimes by the ticket item selling through eBay. And I'm like, does anyone know that this 50,000 card sold on a Tuesday night?

And it's just it's been wild to me to observe that. But when you look at kinda 2025 data in per behavior, what what has maybe changed for you and just how you've observed how collectors are using eBay or anything that stands out?

I I I two things are are coming to mind a bit in one is thinking about, actually, 2024.

If we think about 2024, that was the year of the rookie. We had Lemby. We had Skeens. We had Bedard. We had Caitlin Clark, who I'm missing. We had, Jaden Daniels and CJ Stroud depending on what beginning or end of the year.

I was actually really nervous about 2025 because here we had these amazing player driven sets and rookies. And these we're talking about Lembby's once in a in a decade interest in him.

Bedard, maybe the same way. Caitlin Clark, for sure. And I was actually really nervous about this year given those tremendous how how big we saw those those that year going.

And this year's really been a confirmation of how strong the market is because we've had some great rookies, but it's really driven by a lot of the interest we've had, individual story lines, the work that everyone's doing, like the content driving, and people just being interested in growing their collection.

So twenty twenty five is really a confirmation of how important collecting is in pop culture, in everyday life that people are continuing to come even after this banner year and seeing this great growth.

We released, I think, in in the last q three earnings that we'd seen 11 straight course and trading cards of accelerated growth. And to see that continue into into 2025 was awesome.

So it's almost like a confirmation of how great this hobby is and is here and is here to stay and sustain and continue to just grow really well. And then maybe the other one is is just the continued growth of live.

EBay Live has been so strong for us just as we see sellers coming, buyers coming, and a different type of engagement, and I believe is actually drawing a different type of collector in an interest of collector that helps to further expand, the hobby and the amount of people that that are collecting.

How do you when the when you're sitting in your the GM of the trading cards category and it continues to go up into the right, like, all the all the metrics, what we wanna see in any business we're working at.

How do you not just, like, stay on autopilot and just say, okay. Everything's going great. Let's just keep things running, but, like, spend time thinking about new areas or areas of focus that you haven't been focused on?

Like, how do you navigate that? Because it's so easy for us in our roles whenever we're doing to to get comfortable when growth is just happening. But how have you maybe not taken it for granted? Like, how do you think about that? Yeah.

Maybe it's maybe it's a bit of the high standards of eBay and continuously watching and making sure that we're on top of all the inputs and the outputs and watching and making sure those things are are going well and thinking having a future focus too.

You know? The the year that we have this year is gonna be phenomenal, but we always have to be improving to continue to have people come and view eBay as a third and wanna come to us first.

And knowing next year and the next year is gonna be really important too, and then we can make these improvements in having that mid and long term outset and not just thinking about the the short term as well.

I think those are probably some of the things that help us continue to drive forward and continue to know that feel good about what we're doing for customers is good, but then also hearing feedback and hearing things that it's never perfect.

And so watching, staying connected to the customer, knowing there are so many things we can fix. And, the amount of places that we can innovate, it's it's maddening on how many different things we could possibly do.

I wish we could could be able to do all a 100 of the things that we're looking at that, it's inspiring. It's inspiring because there's a lot of fun things and interesting ways that we can we can improve.

I wanna get into maybe eBay and how eBay is investing in the category. I was at the national and, they I I I saw a lot I've I've done shows before in other industries, but I saw eBay everywhere.

And so there was an investment from a marketing perspective. But then eBay Live, you mentioned it earlier, like, it I felt like eBay Live was getting a lot more placement and exposure for collectors and settlers.

Where maybe it letting us all in on on it, where maybe is eBay putting resources that collectors will feel and not just kinda hear about heading into the new year?

Yeah. The re yeah. It's a great time to ask that question because we're we're doing we we're finishing up all of our planning for next year.

And the ways that we're thinking about the business go back to some of the pillars I've talked about, but, specifically, the areas that we look at are investments in, our collectors and our customers and how we can come to market and make things great.

And then also in eBay Live, those are two two big areas.

And to get a little bit deeper, you think about the collector. And eBay's always been a marketplace, and you buy or you sell, you buy, you add to your collection, sell, turn these things, make some room, buy some more some more cards.

But we also wanna make sure that we're delivering different services in different ways.

Our product and tech teams are so phenomenal and fantastic that we've been able to make introductions this year, and there's even more planned for next year, whether it was doing something simple like adding pop reports, which was incredibly complex, but simple as in the mindsets.

Adding research to that that page. So that listing, you can see things, and we're making it simple so you can see all those things on the page. Do your research within the page.

Doing thing like things like live activities, those are the areas that we wanna continue, invest, and innovate in. And then the eBay live element, and customers are so interested in being able to buy things live.

See you, YouTube content, the things that you do are have have been a major driver in our hobby. The fact that we can now be inside the lives and watch things like Netflix starting five or the Netflix f one drive to survive.

And then even even about collecting, with the golden show, the king of collectibles, Tom being out there, that gained so much so much interest, and it's a way to be closer to the hobby that live is such a natural extension of that where people can be in a room, they can talk.

It's akin, not the same, but akin to being at a local car shop and having a community and see things and hear things. It's a great way for to maintain engagement and be close to the closer to the hobby.

So live is another area where we're hiring, we're investing, we're making the product better, bringing on new sellers, and we're trying to be extremely innovative, because it's another great great way to bring collectors to the hobby.

The you mentioned king of collectibles, and you probably know this just in terms of, like, something be promoting something, like, that show promoting the the broader hobby.

And I think about, like, the last dance and its impact on cards. I think about rookies like Caitlin Clark and Wimby and their impact on cards. Like, how important are those moments whether it's a a rookie, a new Netflix show?

Like, how important are those moments in growth? And when those moments do happen, is, like, how quickly do you start seeing the impact, from your perspective on on eBay?

Immediately. That night, it's from search to sales, you see it it flow through. And we we talk about what is the true seasonality of trading cars, collectibles, sports memorabilia.

And some people come in, you see it. Yes. It's kind of the season, but it's driven off of player moments. It's driven off of releases. That's like the culminating and I you know, we're that's the moment you're buying the card.

So we see the the purchase of the the wax rising on presale, peaking at release, and then you see this other chart of as soon as this other line in the chart, as soon as the wax is releasing out in hands, you see the singles spike, value spike, and they and now they eventually this the the they come down a little bit, and they they normalize on a on a sale.

But you see those those moments happening. And then just the also, the the content of it all is terrific when you see those.

I I wish I could think of maybe a moment when some of the or one of the shows because there's the obvious ones like f one that totally drove the interest in that piece.

Yeah. It's But then when they have the individual documentaries coming out or even an individual player doing a good job of being on social media, those those are her huge drivers.

Sundar Sanders is getting a start and seeing immediate pop in his cards, whether or not, you know, how far he's gonna take it, who knows. But those come so fast.

Or if it's this this rather immediate slow burn of someone like Caitlin Clark that's just ascended, ascended, ascended, and as the cards become like, the cards were late to get this Caitlin Clark because she was so so great, and to see that that stand up.

It is it is awesome. And there's also you know something else is coming.

Something great in sports always comes. So now we've gotten the Chiefs are in in in, yeah, a lot of folks who are happy about it, but that's been America's team for the last however many years.

But new storylines, new come come into play, and new players are gonna come out, from Jake Drake May Drake May coming coming into his own.

You're gonna have those stories and they're all Shohei going fifty fifty, last year. They're always something will come and pop, and we'll see it immediately in the sales.

I can't believe it's taken this long for, Shohei mentioned to take place, but, I I wanna hit maybe the just I there are working on a platform as big as eBay, like, there's always improvements, updates, maybe something doesn't go right.

You need to fix it. I think one thing we don't always talk about in the hobby, how eBay is so big. It's not just trading cards. It's everything.

But, like, thinking about, like, you prioritizing, like, trying to solve some problem that customers are facing, how do you go about that, and how do you kinda just make make what you're hearing from kind of collectors a priority to get fixed?

Like, talk us maybe a little bit through that process when it's, like, maybe a platform improvement. Yeah. It's it's it's having a good doing a lot of great research, having a good plan, and thinking out several years.

So we we talk I we talked a little earlier about the pillars, having that. The selection, the trust, and the experience are three things that we're very much focused on.

And then there's continuously every year, we have what's called learning agenda, where we have a consumer insights team that's talking to collectors and consumers and sellers as well to to give us a little bit more of the qualitative approach, going out to shows, learning there.

Then we've got a an amazing analytics team, and they're both giving us the daily reports, but they're also doing incredible studies looking at what's the correlation between delivery time and customer satisfaction to know how important it is and when we need to make sure that there's we have a little bit of a magic number of, hey.

You need to ship in two days. And if we don't ship in two days, we start to see customer satisfaction drop core in correlation with that. And so now we're driving our sellers to to deliver that time. So you've got this research.

You've got kind of your your belief, and then you've got your innovative ideas where we're looking at how each one of them contributes, making sure we're starting with innovations for customers first, sellers, driving forward trust as well, and then looking at how impactful they'll be.

And it's always difficult. You wish you had a single metric for all of them, but it's also looking at those.

And there's a final round of probably haggling for resources and and and balancing, both effort and impact to something, be it in, satisfaction, being it in fixing problem, or being it even probably in dollars and what something is gonna contribute.

It's it's good insight. I can't imagine the amount of, inputs you're looking at, what your dashboard looks like, all the things.

I'm sure it's, just stacks and stacks of data. And maybe just kinda as we're rounding this out, I I'm curious, like, there's usually behaviors that are taking place and maybe data points that you see before the growth actually happens.

Is there anything you that stands out to you in terms of, like, collector behaviors that have happened over a year or two years that you were seeing it bubble up at the time, and then you started to, like, analyze it, and then that meant growth.

Is there anything that stands out to you just over your course of time at eBay that you can call out?

Yeah. What's amazing about eBay is it's so big and covers so much that we catch the our sales our our sales are so big that we catch the wind of all these things, which is phenomenal.

And I I a philosophy that that that I have somehow learned in my career is we look at if you look at the inputs and deliver on the inputs, those will always turn into successful outputs, outputs probably being your revenue most likely.

But if you do things right on the input side, those are the things that you can change and you can can be better on. Those are things like the more listings we have, we can definitely drive that.

But if we have more listings, those are gonna turn into GMV, making sure that customers are satisfied with their experience and knowing how quickly we can deliver to customers and delivering faster if we can.

How many times even people are bidding or watching an item or even just adding to cart. Those are all inputs that we can try to make sure.

So bids doing the, the live activities can drive up bids. Getting back information about things that maybe if there's returns not as described or to us or item not received, digging down and impacting those.

And when you start to impact those individual metrics, all of the output will will will improve.

And by doing really those great fundamentals, we know we can catch the the wind of, you know, whoever's gonna emerge in, the NFL playoffs in the Super Bowl, whatever great rookie sensation comes along.

And so I think that kind of focus on fundamentally doing those inputs right know with that, we know we can turn that in or that will turn into the right outputs for the business.

I've learned so much from the individuals that I've talked to on this show, and one of the questions I always ask, the individuals I'm talking with is who are working in the industry is what what advice would you give to others who are outside the industry, who are just, you know, maybe collectors, but potentially wanna wanna pursue a career in in this space.

You're obviously you've you've been in this space and working for two of the biggest companies in this space.

What what advice would you have for anyone listening who's kinda thinking about taking the next step and pursuing a career in the sports card industry?

Yeah. I think I might I might say build your skill set, build your identity. It would say, build your network, be patient, and and and take your shot. In in this space, it's extremely competitive.

I think a lot of industries where you've got people that are interested in, it means that there's going to be a lot of people that wanna work, and it makes it more competitive than than probably other places.

And so to be able to have a strong skill set that you've developed over time and identity, now you can you can off you're bringing a great thing to the table for these companies, and you can position yourself as both an expert within cards and an expert within the technical side or the sales side or the business development side.

And it's it takes some time, to break in also. So that patience of knowing that the work you will do will always always pay off.

It might take a couple months, but also might take a couple years and knowing that that long term is where you wanna be, you'll get there. And I'd say the last one is taking that shooting your shot there.

I know to get this job, I linked in and and and messaged, the the the VP over collectibles at the time. And, there's I have other friends in the industry that I met at PSA who emailed or or texted the right person.

The fact that my friend introduced me to people in the industry helped me to get a job. And the more your network grows, the more of these opportunities that come up.

If you know two people, you might get one opportunity. If you know a 100 people, you're probably gonna get four or five opportunities that are coming come your way.

Great advice. Before I let you get out of here, Mike, I'm gotta ask you. When collectors think about eBay five years from now, what do you hope they say changed because of the work you're doing in your current role?

Oh, Oh, I would say it would be amazing if in not that any maybe it's more about, not that something in particular.

I guess what would be great is if in five years, people are looking at this or looking back and they're like, this hobby is so much bigger and so much better than it was before. I've met so much more people. There's more cars out there.

There's more people involved. Maybe they'll buy, sell, trade so much more If we can grow collecting as a whole because of the things that we're doing at eBay, that would be that would be incredible. It's become mainstream.

It becomes even, you know, not not so like, it becomes even bigger and more mainstream. That means that people are enjoying what they're doing. I think that would be a tremendous, tremendous success. Mike, this was a fun conversation.

Looking forward to putting on more of these conversations in 2026 and getting other members of the eBay team involved. Looking forward to the next chat. Thanks, Brett. I appreciate. You are the best at what you do.

We so appreciate having you. You bring so much out in your guests and the hobby. I love listening to you and appreciate what you're doing, and I hope you had a great year and and looking forward to a good New Year as well.