Adam Ireland is both a veteran and a newbie. A collector since childhood, he’s worked at eBay since 2011, but he only recently became eBay’s Vice President and General Manager of Global Collectibles. The new role brought him to his first National Sports Collectors Convention this week in Cleveland.

So, what’s he think of the show?

“The scale is somewhat unimaginable,” Ireland said. “It's heaven. I'm going to be in such trouble with my son when I get back. He was already upset with me for not bringing him along, and now that I've seen it, I'm going to be telling him stories about exactly how many people are here.”

Mantel caught up with Ireland to discuss the future of The Hobby and his vision for eBay’s collectibles vertical.

(Note: This conversation has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.)

What got you into collecting?

I grew up in the UK. There, kids collected Panini stickers for soccer. So my earliest collecting memories are around the 1986 World Cup soccer. But I really got immersed into collecting in a prior role at eBay, where I was supporting the trading cards team back in 2020, building out the vault and the authenticity guarantee program. Now I just feel privileged to be in my new role leading the collectibles verticals globally because it's the OG of eBay business. It’s the sort of heart of our DNA.

What do you like to collect now?

My son and I are both Celtics fans. He loves Jason Tatum and Jaylen Brown, so we've been trying to collect the rainbow across the Prizm collections for those guys. And I love to go down the historical rabbit hole. There are soccer cards from the 1970s that I think are really cool because they are the players that were legends when I was growing up. I support a very obscure soccer team, Derby County, that was really good in the 1970s. So I find these old cigarette packet cards from back then.

What lessons from your experience with other eBay verticals can you apply to your new role with collectibles?

The thing I love about eBay in general is our audience is the enthusiast, right? You don't come to eBay to buy toilet paper or your commodity items. It really is the place where you come to buy things that you love, and you see that same passionate enthusiast whether they're people repairing cars in the parts and automobiles categories, whether it's in fashion, whether it’s sneakers and watches. For me, the key is just that you've always got to be close to the customer and understand their needs, and there's always going to be differences around that category by category. That’s why it's been so great being here at The National. We've been meeting with a bunch of our sellers, hearing about the things that make trading cards different.

This industry got really hot during the pandemic. What are some trends within the industry that you're excited about?

The thing that’s exciting for me is that the pandemic brought in so many new buyers, so many new sellers, and you also have so many who came back into trading cards. Even though we've seen pricing come down a little bit since then, I don't feel like those buyers and sellers have gone away, so that's a really healthy base for the industry to grow. And then you see things like the live activations that we have here, and that's like an entirely new mode of commerce in many ways. That just opens up The Hobby to another generation that is used to being on their phone, used to absorbing video content. Obviously you've got case breaks, a massive trend, a massive growth area for The Hobby as well. But I'm also really excited about how you bring traditional kinds of auctions into that format. I know I get carried away when I'm on eBay Live, and you're seeing that clock ticking down and you start hitting the button, even more so than a regular auction, because you’ve got a seller in front of you, telling you this item is really unique for this reason and that reason, and here's the history of it — it just sucks you in. As a seller, you’ve got the opportunity to drive the prices higher via the entertainment that you're able to bring to that experience.

What makes eBay the place people should still be turning to in light of these new trends?

We've got the greatest selection out there. That means that we are always going to be the center of The Hobby, and that gives us a unique opportunity to be able to tap into the new trends as they emerge. When you’ve got 132 million buyers globally, you’re able to expand those trends and bring them to the masses. 

How does your partnership with PSA fit into the future of collectibles at eBay?

We want to make the experience of buying and selling trading cards as seamless as you can, across the whole breadth of inventory that's out there. Our CEO, Jamie Iannone, talks about creating magical experiences. Usually, when he's talking about that stuff, he is referring to the way that AI can develop new product features, but when you look at the ability for something that's in the PSA Vault to get listed directly on eBay in one or two clicks, I think that's kind of magical. Marketplaces thrive on liquidity, so whenever you make it easier for people to buy and sell, you're going to bring more liquidity into the market. That's a lot of what the PSA relationship is about, just making it more seamless for everybody.

And how about eBay’s acquisition of Goldin?

Goldin has such a powerful brand in the top end of the market, and that's just a super nice complement to eBay, which has traditionally played more in mid markets. For items that are going for millions of dollars, Goldin is going to be the more natural home for that type of inventory — and now we can bring the power of eBay's audience to that. The last Goldin 100 was promoted on the eBay homepage. Again, we've got 132 million people in 190 countries, and that's just more eyeballs on that type of inventory. So there are lots of fun opportunities to expand Ken Goldin's audience. At the same time, we can help him in categories that Goldin has maybe not been part of in the past and eBay adds additional strength. We have a great watches business, a great sneakers business. So we're having a lot of conversations about how we can help Ken and the Goldin team get into additional categories.

What are you looking forward to during the rest of your time at The National?

I need to carve out more time just to walk the floor, search everything from those low-value bins to some of the high-end stuff. We've also got like 25 different live programs at the eBay booth over the course of the weekend, including some really fun athletes that are going to be coming by. So it'll be nice to just be a bit of a fan.

(Photos courtesy of eBay)