Hobby Jobs: Your Reputation Is Your Resume in the Sports Cards Industry

Foreign. What's up? Welcome back to another episode of Hobby Jobs here on the Stacking Slabs Network. Excited to be here. Excited to talk about the industry, the growing infrastructure companies. What is going on? This has been one of my favorite new projects to work on. It started with the newsletter. Make sure you are signed up. Link in the show notes New newsletter goes out every Tuesday. The Sunday podcast serves as a companion piece. This very much feels like a startup within my startup creating new content streams to appeal to a different side of the hobby. Want to first say hopefully collectors are listening. I think it's really important to have some understanding of what is happening on the industry side. How are companies thinking? Where's the investment coming from? How is hiring going on? Where are companies placing their bets in? We're going to be talking about those sorts of things on the hobby job side of Stacking Slabs and the momentum around this project has been incredible. I'm having so many great conversations with individuals inside of the industry about what we're working on here and it is becoming a very valuable piece of content. That is the feedback that I'm getting and so appreciate all of you taking some time out of your Sunday or whenever you're listening to this to support Hobby Jobs. Make sure you hit the follow button and tell a damn friend. I think where I want to start with this one is something that I've been thinking about a lot and I think most people in this hobby still think the game is all about knowledge. You can know the player, know the set, know the grade, know the comp, know the products inside and out and that matters. But what I have been learning is that is not enough anymore because the sports card industry is becoming more sophisticated by the minute. The biggest companies in this space are building around authentication, vaulting, verification, client services, category strategy and most importantly trust. You can look at ebay they keep expanding. Card authentication fanatics is building bank style storage and instant marketplace movement around high value collections. Veriswap is literally selling the idea that both sides of a trade can be verified and insured. Collectors is describing itself as infrastructure for trust, security and opportunity. That should tell you everything about where the market is headed. Trust is a topic that I talk about a lot throughout the Stacking Slabs network. I believe trust is the most important asset that we have in this space. It's not a soft skill in business. Trust is the business, especially in the sports card industry. If that's true, then your reputation is not some side topic. It's not just a branding exercise. It is not something you think about once the followers show up or once the company gets bigger, or once the high end clients start calling. Your reputation is the operating system underneath it all. It is what people say about you when you're not in the room. It's what they remember when something goes wrong. It is what gets you referred. It's what gets you inventory. It's what gets you introduced. It's what gets you hired. It is what gets the second chance that other people never get. And that's what I want to talk about in today's episode of Hobby Job. So welcome back. If you've been here from the jump. If you are new, appreciate you jumping along for the ride. I I guess I should probably provide some clarity up front for anyone new and I try to do this whenever I start new shows and you'll hear this, you'll hear me repeat probably a similar or adjacent thing. The way new shows work is that each week there are new listeners. So if you're just showing up, go buy. Listen to the back catalog. But if it's your first time, I'll make it very clear that this show exists for people building the sports card industry and the people who want to build in it. This is shop owners, consigners, content builders, marketplace operators, graders, people who work at PSA, eBay, Fanatics, Sotheby, Veris, Swap Card Vault, a startup no one has heard of yet, or the company that hasn't even started. This show is not built around hobby drama. This show is built around reading. It's not built around just reading job listings into a microphone and is definitely not a show built for the person who just wants more noise. This is for operators. It is for aspiring operators. It is for the people who know the hobby is growing, know that infrastructure is getting stronger, know that the opportunities are getting more interesting, but also that the map is messy. That has been the point of hobby jobs from the start. Bring the lessons that are usually scattered across private conversations, convention floor chats, podcast dms into one place where people can actually use them. That was the original thesis in the newsletter, and that thesis still exists now. The reason I care so much is very, very simple. Over the past couple years I have had more than almost 100 conversations with people working full time in the sports card industry. Different businesses, different models, different personalities. But one idea has kept surfacing over and over again. The operators who last are the ones who understand trust. The ones who understand relationships. The ones who understand that in a hobby that moves fast, reputation compounds slowly, and that slow compounding is exactly what gives it power. So today I want to talk about the core idea from the latest issue of Hobby Jobs and use this format to expand on it a little bit. I don't want to repeat the newsletter to expand on it, to pressure test it, to translate it into something useful. If you're trying to build a career, build a company, or become the kind of person the industry just can't ignore, the theme is very simple. Your reputation is is your resume. Let's start with the part that most people never want to hear. A lot of people in the hobby say they want opportunities. What they actually want is outcomes. They want the role, they want the partnership, they want to get sponsored. They want the client, they want the inventory connection. They want the behind the scenes access. They want to be in the room. But they do not always want to do the quieter work that makes those things rational for the other side. Because that is really what reputation is. Reputation is not self expression. Reputation is risk reduction. When someone hires you, refers you, consigns with you, buys from you, trades with you, collaborates with you, or hands you responsibility, what they are really doing is taking a risk. They're betting that you are who you say you are. They are betting that you will communicate. They are betting that you will follow through. They're betting that you will not create unnecessary friction. They're betting that you will not embarrass them. They're betting that your judgment is sound. They're betting that if something breaks, you will handle it like a pro. That's why reputation matters so much. It lowers the temperature in a decision. And this is not theory. Just look at the way the market itself is being built right now. Ebay, which is a wonderful partner here at stacking slabs, did not expand card authentication because trust is a night nice to have. They did it because high value card buyers want expert verification verified returns entitled chain of custody. Fanatics isn't spending time marketing their security high res images and half a billion dollars in value under management because collectors are bored. They are doing it because serious collectors and sellers want confidence, visibility and easier execution. Veriswap is not centered on verified insured swaps because safe sounds good is a tag is just a tagline. It is centered there because trading only scales when counterparties believe that process protects them. And there's a darker reason all of that infrastructure keeps getting built. The market has always earned a level of skepticism. The FBI said years ago that fraud was a major threat to memorabilia. I know there was a case in my backyard of an individual forging autographs and had been doing it for a very, very long time. Federal prosecutors have more recently gone after counterfeit card schemes involving forged PSA grades and a large scale damage. To collectors, that matters because it reminds us that every clean transaction in this hobby is competing against memory of things that have gone wrong before. Authenticity problems, communication problems, fulfillment problems, grade manipulation, misrepresentation, non payment, all of it. So if you're building inside the space, the first thing I want burned into your brain is your reputation is not a personal brand slogan. It's evidence. Evidence that you can be trusted in a market where trust still has to be actively earned. That is why I think so many people miss the real source of leverage in the hobby. They think leverage comes from audience size. Sometimes it does. They think leverage comes from access to capital. Sometimes it does. They think leverage comes from knowing the right people. Sometimes it does. But the deeper level is this. Why do those people keep taking your call? Why do those people keep sending business your way? Why do those people feel comfortable attaching their name to yours? That is reputation. And I think the easiest way to understand it is it's to break it into three separate ledgers. You have the public ledger. This is what the market can find. Your posts, your comments, your videos, your newsletters, your podcast appearance, your ebay feedback, your public interactions, your body of work. Then you have a private ledger. This is what gets shared in text threads, group chats, DM side conversations. The person ship fast, the person over promise that person was fair when the deal got weird. The person talks big but does not follow through. The person knows their lane. The person is easy to work with. The person creates problems. This person adds value. And then you have the operating ledger. That is what happens when real life hits. Do you know the answer when things break? Do you meet deadlines? Do you communicate proactively? Do you handle conflict like an adult? Do you stay organized? Do you do what you said you were going to do? Those three ledgers become your reputation. And if you want to build a career in this industry, you need all three working for you. Because the hobby is is smaller than people think. That was the central idea in the launch issue of Hobby Jobs and is one of the most important truths in this category. From the outside, the hobby looks enormous. From the inside, the real network of operators, sellers, buyers, consigners, creators, service providers and decision makers is much tighter than most people realize. Word, travel, storage, travel experience travels the market, keeps receipts. I feel the hobby is smaller than ever before. Just in the two years I'VE been working full time. I can't not have a conversation with someone where they bring up someone and I know that person or they bring up some someone that they want to get connected with and I know and make that connection. That is why I think this is really important to understand. And I think that is why bad operators can look bigger online than they actually are for a while and still end up with a ceiling. Eventually private memory catches up to that public image. And that is also why smaller, quieter, high integrity operators can keep getting better opportunities than more visible people. Because trust names circulate differently, they move through the market with less resistance. They're also true on the career side. One of the things that stood out to me from the very first issue of Hobby Jobs was Michael Osaki saying that about 95% of his business is referral base. That is not just a hobby nugget. It maps to a broader truth in hiring and business development. Referral based opportunities are powerful because someone else has already done part of the trust transfer for you. They are not saying I know this person. They are saying I'm comfortable being wrong in public. If I vouch for this person, that is a much bigger statement. So what do you actually do with this? If you're listening and try to build, I think you start by asking some uncomfortable questions. Questions like what are you known for? Not what do you think you are known for? What do people actually associate with your name? Next. What evidence exists in public? If someone searched your name today, would they find signs that you contribute to the hobby, think clearly, communicate well and understand? Elaine. Next. What happens when something goes wrong? Because this is where a lot of reputations are really made. I think this is the fourth one. Are you building trust or chasing attention? There's a difference. Attention can get you seen. Trust gets you chosen. And fifth, the last one. What have you done in the last 90 days that would make somebody more confident in you? Not more entertained by you, more confident in you? That is a different bar. Maybe it's something you wrote that was thoughtful. Maybe it's someone you helped. Maybe you showed your process. Maybe you handled a public issue with maturity. Maybe you created a project that reveals how you think. Maybe you followed through 10 times in a row on something small. All of it counts. This is why I love the action item in the latest issue. Publish one thing that demonstrates how you think, not what you are selling. That is one of the clearest ways you can convert private inability into public proof. And the operators who do that consistently stop needing to explain themselves so much, the market starts to speak for them. I want to be very direct here. If you are waiting for the perfect role to show up before you start building your reputation, you're doing it backwards. The reputation has to come first. The role, the client, the opportunity are often downstream of that. That does not mean you need to be an influencer. It does not mean you need 10,000 followers. It doesn't mean you need a podcast. It means if you want this market to take you seriously, you need some visible pattern of seriousness. Because reputation is not just a single post. It is built in the accumulation. And accumulation is where most people quit I had a great time catching up last week with Adam Gray. The Real 27 guy published that episode on Passion and Profession. If you only discovered Adam recently through social clips, it would be easy to tell the lazy story. You would see polished content. You would see the hobby credibility. You would see audience response. You would see partnerships. You would see and you might think this guy has figured out the algorithm. That's not the story though. The real story is that Adam has spent decades immersed in basketball cards. He launched Basketball Card Fanatic, the magazine. He stayed obsessed with the stories behind cards and kept building a body of work until the market had to take him seriously. The recent episode was great. I always appreciate connecting with him. But you heard from a lifelong collector who turned a passion into profession through storytelling, education, and context. What hit me most about Adam's story is not even the career transition. It's the method. He got valuable because he understood how to make context valuable. He studies why a card matters, what it represents, where it fits historically, why a collector should care about the surface. That is a skill and that is a business skill. Because context does not just educate. Context does. Differentiates. It gives collectors a reason to stop scrolling. It gives buyers a reason to care. It gives a brand a reason to hire you. It gives a company a reason to trust your voice around its product or audience. That is the hidden thing a lot of people miss about content in this hobby. Good content is not just distribution. It's a trust vehicle. It says, when I'm in the room, clarity increases. That is reputation and practice. And the best part is, Adam's story is not some weird exception. I've seen the same pattern in conversation after conversation. It keeps coming up over and over again. So should an aspiring operator. What should aspiring operator take from Adam? First, build a project before you need the outcome. A lot of people want the resume line without the body of work that earns it. Adam had the project Next, let your obsession become useful. The hobby does not reward knowledge evenly. It rewards knowledge that is packaged in a way other people can benefit from. Third, stay close to what you naturally notice. In Adam's case, that was stories and context. In your case it might be market structure, grading, vintage logistics content, customer experience data. But you need a visible lane. Fourth, respect the power of accumulated reps. This is where I think a lot of people get trapped. They want the leap. They want the archive. The archive is the thing. The archive is what people trust. The archive is what changes how your name gets brought up when opportunities surface. If you have been showing your thinking for three years, you do not introduce yourself the same way who started something last week. The market already has you on file. That is why I think Adam's story pairs so well with this reputation thing. Because he did not just build content, he built proof. And proof is what turns a hobbyist into a professional. Let's close this thing out with jobs. It is hobby jobs. So let's talk about it because I think jobs tell you exactly what the market values. And this is the mistake a lot of people make when they're looking at openings. They treat jobs like listings. I think you should treat them like signals. A send a signal that a company has identified a bottleneck. They signal that workflow is becoming important enough to formalize. A signal is a skill stack is becoming more valuable. A signal that the market is maturing. Look at a few roles that are sitting in front of us right now. Sotheby's has a current opening for specialists of modern collectibles and has public language around the role of emphasizing sports market knowledge, client development, relationship building and protecting a luxury brand standard. That is not a company hiring someone merely just to know memorabilia. That is a company hiring a revenue producing advisor visor inside a global auction environment. Sotheby's own sports memorabilia materials reinforce the scale of the signal. That is an institution with a global auction footprint, formal sports specialist function and a world record sports memorabilia sales veriswap collectors relation lead that is open is even more revealing about this week's theme. The company says it operates 10 billion plus on the secondary market and has completed 160 million in transactions over three years and serves 120,000 users. The job itself is framed like a normal customer support is not framed like a normal customer support role. It is framed named around VIP hospitality, trust advisor behavior and helping complete more trades and giving fair advice on cards. That is a company saying in public that high end collector relationships deserve white glove operators Ryan at card collector 2. He's hiring for an operations and community manager role. It's another important signal. It spans breakers, customer service, shipping, inventory, shopify, ebay, whatnot, live stream operations. This means the modern hobby is not just one discipline. It is operations, media, retail, hospitality and logistics all bundled together. The person who can bridge those worlds becomes incredibly valuable. And look at collectors, Director of TCG and pop culture marketing. That one sits at the intersection of product marketing, category leadership, pricing partnerships, operations and collector insights. The company wants someone who understands grading, secondary markets, release cycles in collector mindset and can turn that understanding into go to market execution and category growth. That is a translator role and a serious one. That is the real highlight the week of this week. The rise of the translator. Not the collector, not the marketer, not the operator, not the personality. The translator. The person who can connect collector behavior to business action. The person who can connect trust to revenue. The person who can connect expertise to execution. The person who can move between culture and systems without losing credibility in either direction. If you want a career in this industry, there is an archetype I would study. Become the person who can do that. If you are early, pick one function and stack hobby fluency on top of it. If you're in operations, get better at customer experience and systems. If you're in content, get better at business translation. If you're in sales, get better at trust and category depth. If you're in product or tech, get closer to collector psychology. If you're purely a collector right now, start operating in the small Launch the page, help a local show, learn shipping, learn submissions. Study marketplaces because the market is getting more professional. And the people who will win in the next five years are not the ones who just love cards the most. They're the ones who can turn that love into reliable value for other people. This is what Hobby Jobs is here to do. Not just show you openings. Help you understand what the openings mean. Not just spotlight operators. Help you see a pattern underneath those stories. Not just talk about the hobby. Help the people building it become more useful, more trusted and more prepared. So here's the challenge I want to leave you with this week. Publish one thing that demonstrates how you think. Not what you're selling, not what you bought, not what comp move or how you think. A lesson, a process, an observation, a framework, a point of view. Leave the evidence behind because the best opportunities in this industry do not usually arrive out of nowhere. Like a Randy Orton rko, they land on the people who have been leaving the trail. If that is the kind of work you care about. Sign up for Hobby Jobs link is in the show notes. Share it with someone building in the hobby and if your company is hiring or if you see a role serious operators should know about, send it my way. If you are out there and you are building a company in this space and you want to connect, you can find me. You can email me@stackingslabsmail.com would love to hear from you. Instagram stackingslab send me a DM the hobby may be built on cardboard, but the people who last are built on trust. Make sure you check out the new edition of hobbyjobs newsletter on Tuesday. I'll be back here next Sunday. Take care. Happy building. Talk to you soon.