Hobby Musings: Jeff Rosenberg, TRISTAR – Interview
Hobby Musings: Jeff Rosenberg, TRISTAR – Interview Transcript
Editor’s note: Some text has been changed from original audio for grammar and clarity.
KS: Hey, everyone! Welcome to another edition of Hobby Musings. I’m Kelsey Schroyer, joined today by TRISTAR’s Jeff Rosenberg. Jeff, thanks for joining us.
JR: Oh sure, glad to be here Kelsey.
KS: So, we’re early in 2025, almost at the end of January. You’ve got your big kind of kickoff show of the year going on in Houston. What more can you tell me about that?
JR: Well, it’s going to be a great show this weekend. I love the show. Started it in 1987. So, we’ve been doing in a long time and people just seem to love it. It’s the 39th version this year. We’ll have about 440 to 450 dealer tables. So, we have the top dealers from around the country coming in to buy, sell, trade. And that’s really the heart of the show, right, is buying, selling and trading with the dealers.
And then you have people come in to get things authenticated. The PSAs is and SGC’s of the world are there as well. And then of course, people come in from all over to get signatures. So, we’ve got some of the local Houston favorites: Jeff Bagwell, Craig Biggio, Roger Clemens, a couple players from our current team Yanier Diaz, our star catcher. Really, Silver Slugger Award finalist. A lot of people are kind of figuring out who he was. He’s led the AL catchers in batting average and hits.
We’ve got, some former players. Goose Gossage, great Yankee, Padre, etc. Hall of Famer. Keith Hernandez great, great Met. And then a couple just great, three great Hall of Famers, two of whom are already enshrined in Cooperstown, one of whom was an Astro, Met, Philly great will be, he just got announced. So, we’ve got Cal Ripken and Ryne Sandberg coming in this weekend. And then Billy Wagner, who of course just got elected to the Hall of Fame. So, this will be the first show appearance for him as a Hall of Famer.
We’ve got some, baseball’s top rising star prospects. We always like to do prospects. So, we’ve got J.J. Wetherholt, shortstop, the number one pick for the Cardinals. Parker Smith, recent pick for the Houston Astros, out of here in Houston and Rice. A guy a lot of people know, who I think is one of the best pitching prospects in baseball. A guy named Kumar Rocker, was a big star at Vanderbilt. National champion. And now he’s with the Rangers, you’ll see him up on their roster. We’ve got Braylon Payne, Trey Morgan, LSU champion. And Bryce Matthews, Astros first round pick.
Then when we go to football, it’s just a plethora of Football Hall of Famers and greats. Guys like, well, you were just talking off air Kelsey about the Steelers. We’ve got Jerome Bettis, one of the greatest Steelers of all time. And Mean Joe Green right there. Here more locally, Dallas Cowboy Michael Irvin. Ray Lewis, great Baltimore Raven. Eric Dickerson, another local Houston guy. He was a great Ram. Tony Dorsett, another great Dallas Cowboy.
And then we got greats like Johnny Manziel, Heisman winner from A&M. DeMarvion Overshown, University of Texas star. Now a star with the Dallas Cowboys. Another great Dallas Cowboys star, Emmitt Smith, will be there. Then a couple other locals who went on to greatness, Adrian Peterson, one of the greatest running backs of all time. Texas guy. Vince Young, of course, one of my heroes, the Texas Longhorn, national champion. So, it’s going to be quite a weekend with these just tremendous athletes at the show.
KS: Now, that sounds like one heck of a lineup. You mentioned Billy Wagner and touched briefly on the Hall of Fame class. In addition to him, we’ve got CC Sabathia going in, and Ichiro Suzuki. Also, Dick Allen being elected in posthumously. Dave Parker for coming in as well. Out of all those players, whose collectability do you think gets the biggest boost from the Hall of Fame nod from a memorabilia autograph standpoint?
JR: So, I think there will be guys that were sort of not as collected, in terms of, in my opinion, recognized for their greatness. And that’s really going to be Wagner and Dave Parker. You know, Ichiro is already a big name, big star. He’s had cards sell for thousands of dollars or hundreds of thousands, excuse me, in the hobby. Where I saw Billy Wagner’s most expensive card ever sold, it was like 1800 bucks. It’s probably well underappreciated. Dave Parker, with the ‘74 rookie card. You’ll see a lot of people wanting to get that card signed. And of course, baseballs as a Hall of Famer.
So, in my opinion, I grew up watching Parker and, growing up in Houston, got to see him when he played. When he came in with the Pirates, he, I don’t recall. I was a little too young to really appreciate Clemente. I was born in ‘65, so I knew who he was, but I didn’t really get to see him. Remember. But I did see Parker. And I don’t know that I saw a better right fielder, than Dave Parker. And in his prime, Wagner was just unhittable as a closer when he came in. So, I think those are two guys that are going to get, as I would say more “Hobby Love”, if you will.
KS: Nah, no doubt. I remember Billy Wagner destroying the Pirates on many an occasion, always a painful memory. So, looking ahead for the year, you do the autograph signs. But another big part of your business is the packaged products you do, the Hidden Treasures. What do you have coming for those in 2025?
JR: So, a lot of what we’ve been doing, in that, respect, we are trying to create some new opportunities there. What we found, though, were the people really love these products we put out. So, we’ve been doing these baseballs for many, many years, and we just, however many we make, and they’re hard to find to put together exactly as we want. They just really, people just keep buying these things. It’s just it’s amazing to me, how many collectors there are of the Hidden Treasures.
So, we’re really fortunate, and we do the mini helmets, and we do jerseys, full size helmets. So, we keep coming up with new iterations, basketballs, basketball jerseys. It’s really exciting. Now we’re doing, I don’t know if we’ve talked since we’ve been doing trading cards and flat signatures. We’ve done some baseball products where you can pull Perez-Steele cards or Hall of Fame plaques or rookie cards, trading cards. Those are really great products. And they’ve all sold out as soon as we put them on the market. Supply and demand are always tough to figure out, but we never seem to have enough supply.
KS: Well, you mentioned the longevity of them. I mean, I remember buying the first series of eight by tens, and that was over 20 years ago. What do you think has changed in terms of putting the products together over the years?
JR: You know, acquiring the assets and actually putting them together from 20 years ago to now? Well, the biggest part for us, unfortunately, Kelsey, is the cost. These costs of signatures keep rising. There are more collectors, there’s more demand coming to buy the signatures. And the market is our hobby, which I love the fact that our hobby is growing, but it makes it a lot more difficult for me and my teammates here at TRISTAR to be able to secure these great autographs at great prices so we can, turn those back into these products at a good price. And I think, prior to this call, you and I talked about at the National, how repackagers are going and buying cards, and it’s pushing the costs up of the unsigned cards, if you will. We’re experiencing something very similar in the autograph and signature market.
KS: Jeff, I’ll get you out of here on this. We’re still roughly six months away from the National Sports Collectors Convention in Chicago, but you’ve already started announcing signers. Why kind of tease or reveal signers so early now?
JR: So, we’ve had a lot of demand for this from collectors who are planning their trips. They really want to know who’s going to be there. They want to save up the money to be able to buy the tickets to get them. So, a lot of this historically, we had the names we just didn’t announce it. Until right before we were going on sale with the tickets. So really, it’s a reflection of what the collectors are asking, and we want to give it to them.
If I can kind of preview this, and of course, anybody can go to tristarproductions.com and look at our National schedule. But I like to talk about the first-time signers, because we’re asked all the time by collectors who are you going to have that hasn’t been here before?
So, in baseball this year, we’ve got one of the newer Hall of Famers. He just got in this past year, Adrian Beltre, the great from the Dodgers and the Rangers. One of the best third baseman, certainly the last 30 or 40 years. It’ll be his first ever national appearance. He’s very rare to make appearances in the autograph world. Also, Todd Helton, also from the Hall of Fame class of 2024. It’ll be his first appearance. The guy we just talked about Billy Wagner, who will be in the ‘25 class. And the next weekend, if you’re at the National, you’ll be able to get him in his Hall of Fame plaque card. Right? So that’s a tremendous opportunity there.
In football, same thing. 2024 Hall of Famer, Walter Jones, lineman from the Seahawks. We’ve got coach Steve Spurrier, 1966 Heisman Trophy winner, of course, a lot of people know him from Florida. A lot of people know him as the Florida coach.
And one I’m really thrilled about because I really loved watching him. He competed against my Houston Rockets, Patrick Ewing. Well, he competed against my, Houston Cougars when he played for Georgetown. And then obviously with the Knicks. He’s going to be at the show. Very, very rare appearance from a Hall of Famer and all-time great Patrick Ewing.
And then some others that we’ve had at other Nationals. But we just have a lot of demand for. Guys like Wade Boggs and Andre Dawson, Tim Raines, Dave Winfield, Earl Campbell, Jim Kelly. So, any Bills fan, I know the Bills have a little game going this Sunday. Anybody who’s a Bills fan or history, we’ve got the Hall of Famers Jim Kelly, Andre Reed, Bruce Smith, Marv Levy, their coach, who’s in his 90s, will be there. And Thurman Thomas, the great running back Hall of Famer.
So, a lot of great guests shaping up. Another year in Chicago so a fan favorite of mine, the ‘Fridge’ William Perry is going to be there along with some of his teammates, Hall of Famers Richard Dent, Jimbo Covert will also be there. So, it’s shaping up. It’s going to be just another tremendous show this coming summer in Chicago, and we love doing it. I can’t wait, July 30th to August 3rd. Donald Stephens Convention Center.
KS: Now I hear you there, I can’t wait either. Jeff, that all sounds wonderful. Thank you for joining us. And good luck in Houston this weekend.
JR: Thank you, Kelsey, have a great, great weekend yourself. I wish I was going to see you in Houston, but I’m really hoping to see you in Chicago this summer.
Hobby Musings: Jeff Rosenberg, TRISTAR
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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