Hobby Musings: In depth with PSA’s Kevin Lenane – Like many hobby entities over the past few years, PSA has undergone a number of changes. One of those was naming Kevin Lenane as President. While the sports card and memorabilia world is going through a strong period, it hasn’t come without challenges. To find out more about what the company has been up to recently, and his thoughts on PSA overall today, I had the chance to catch up with Mr. Lenane.
KS: Kevin, PSA recently announced that the economy service level is now fully open to Collectors Club members. In a nutshell, what was the significance of this announcement?
KL: We still devote about 80% of our capacity to the backlog. There’s a group of folks that really want their cards back. There’s another group of folks that really want to submit, so we’re trying to balance that by allowing some submissions while also maintaining our progress on the backlog.
Our goal is to have the backlog done by early fall, which is still on course. We are gradually opening up our service tiers. Soon, we are also going to open up other tiers. The main reason is that there’s a significant number of steps in our grading process. The majority of the stuff that we have in the backlog from the COVID era is kind of through the first half of that process. So pretty soon here, we’re going to have to open up more volume to make sure we still have work to do in certain parts of the process.
In short order, we’ll need to start really opening back up, because as that stuff is processed through the later parts of the operational process, we need to have new submissions coming in. That new ems, meaning ones that aren’t from economy and from new tiers that we’re going to be opening, will be done after the backlog is completed.
KS: As we stand today, what do you think is the state of PSA overall?
KL: I think we are slowly improving our services. I think the growth of the industry went quickly for everyone, and PSA has thoughtfully improved the entire operation across the line. We’ve increased capacity. We’ve increased quality. We’ve tried to increase the level of customer service. There’s still growing pains. There’s still a lot more customers for the amount of people we have in-house, but as we hire more skilled workers into those departments, I think we’re maturing from the size that we were to the size we are now. We’re still not where we want to be in terms of service level, meaning the customer experience, but we’re definitely improving.
The same goes for technology. Things are improving on the technology front. There’s various things that we’ve done to better authenticate and better detect fraud. I think over time, things are going to be simpler on the submission side and in other places. I would say it’s one of gradual, but steady improvement.
KS: What is the biggest thing you would like to achieve with the company during your tenure as president?
KL: The number one thing is to help collectors enjoy the hobby. When we think about what we want to do with collectors, of course, we want to grow, but number one is how do we help people enjoy the hobby more? Long-term, it’s all about, how do we engage people in the hobby in meaningful ways that helps them enjoy the hobby while also maybe at the same time making it easier for them to deal with us? Meaning, how do we make the submission process easier, more affordable and more accessible? How do we bring some new people into the hobby? How do we birth a new collector? These are all questions I would like to answer.
The truth is, the hobby itself represents just a small fraction of what people across the world are doing every day, so there’s just a lot of room for growth. But I think there is a question of, why is one person a collector and one person isn’t? I want to understand that. The biggest goal really is helping people engage with us in a way that brings them joy. That’s the whole point of all this. The whole point of collecting is that it’s fun. Improving our services and improving the way we do business and kind of enhancing the customer experience are a means to that end. Meaning, making it easier to submit, making it more affordable, and making it faster and more interesting digitally. Those are the things that are going to bring people joy and give them a better experience in the hobby.
Hobby Musings: In depth with PSA’s Kevin Lenane
Kelsey’s ability to bring hobby coverage to the mainstream sports fan has been a true asset. GTS is happy to feature his thoughts on collecting in Hobby Musings. The opinions expressed are his and do not necessarily reflect those of GTS Distribution.
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