Hobby Musings: Onyx’s Lance Fischer – Interview
Hobby Musings: Onyx’s Lance Fischer – Interview Transcript
Editor’s note: Some text has been changed from original audio for grammar and clarity.
KS: Welcome to another edition of Hobby Musings. I’m Kelsey Schroyer joined today by Onyx’s Lance Fischer. Lance thanks for being with us.
LF: Yeah absolutely. Thanks for having me on Kelsey.
KS: So, you had some pretty big news recently. What more can you tell me about it?
LF: Yes. So, we are now officially licensed by the Major League Baseball Players Association for Minor League trading cards. As we all know, they’re exclusive with Topps on the MLB side for logos and the players. But, because the Minor Leaguers are now unionized, the PA (Players Association) is in charge of all that licensing.
So as of, I want to say, late last year, they put it out there. They toyed with the idea of having an exclusive license for the Minor League trading card piece, but fortunately, that wasn’t a route that was taken. Once we knew that we were in the running to get one of those licenses, we wanted to take full advantage of it. So, it’s exciting stuff. It doesn’t include logos. I know that’s been kind of thrown out there a few times. That’s a whole separate license for those who aren’t sure how that works. Basically, there’s two licenses that you have to have in order to have logos and player access. We’ve got the player access. We’re going to start to look at the logo piece.
I think people look at us and other companies that aren’t licensed as taboo and you shouldn’t buy that or support it. But for those who have supported our brand in the past and currently do now, this is just going to make it even better. There’s going to be more value, there’s going to be a better player selection, a better checklist. I’m excited for it.
KS: So, you just touched on some of the differences or some of the things we’re going to be seeing. When do you think we’ll see those changes hitting your products like later this year or early next year?
LF: Good question. You’ll see that change in Vintage which released. You’ll see a much bigger checklist than what we’ve had in the past. Our checklists of the past were always guys that we had autograph deals with. And so, because we had the autograph deal with them, based on the agreement we put NIL access to that so we can use the name, image and likeness.
Now that we have a license, we can have players that we don’t have autograph deals with. We can put anyone as long as they’re not in the major leagues, we can put them in our product. It expands our checklist substantially from what we were doing in the past, because now it’s not just about the autograph deals that we have in place. Now we can utilize the license to put players that may not have cards out there. Guys that are totally off the radar, that we’re not even sure who their agent may be. Now we can make a card because they are within the Minor League license piece.
KS: So just hearing you talk about this, it sounds kind of like it’s almost a very challenging, complicated deal. But hearing it from you, just what were the challenges in getting this put together?
LF: It was a little nerve wracking because you want to balance it so that we continue to keep the value add in our product. We don’t out price the consumer and those who have supported the brand for years and years and years. So, when we put together our proposal and what made sense not only to us but to the PA, we put it together so that it makes sense. The PA gets what they need, and we get what we need.
Believe it or not we’re able to keep our price points the same, it didn’t go up. I think a lot of people ask: “If you’ve got a license what is that going to do to your pricing of your product? Are people going to afford it now? It doesn’t have a logo still. So, you know, what’s the difference of me buying it last year to buying it this year outside of just a much broader checklist? “
Well, one is it’s a broader checklist. You’ve got a lot more player selection. And two, the price point isn’t going up. We were able to absorb the licensing fee in that based on the autograph deals that we work with the players. Those who have done these type of deals in the past will understand what I’m saying. We were able to balance because the product has grown bigger. We’re able to kind of balance a cheaper autograph price point on our side. Instead of making that a bigger bottom line for us, we’ve absorbed that into the cost of the license.
So that was a challenge at first. How are we going to do that so that the consumer doesn’t take the hit? I think we figured it out. I think we did good because the Vintage product sold out.
KS: So overall, I mean, you’ve been around for a while now, fairly consistent brand of products, changes over the years, but fairly consistent for what you’re well known for and what you do very well. How do you think that this license is going to change your products going forward? What’s the biggest change you think is going to be?
LF: Man, I think it’s going to open the door to a lot of stuff. There’s some additional research that we have to do on our end in order to maximize the license that we have with the PA and see what other opportunities are out there. We’ve got some stuff on the back burner that we’re looking at that could be a little more innovative for the hobby. I think it’ll be big. Again, I know people are looking at this like, oh, you got access to all the players. I don’t think you understand how important that is. It’s very critical in order to build a very strong, and to me, value add product. The more players you can have access to and can build a checklist around, the better the product is going to be.
I mean, I’ll use Roki Sasaki as the perfect example. He signed a Minor League deal. If we released our product earlier in March, we probably would have had him in there. Unfortunately, we couldn’t add him because of the Japanese series and he got his first Major League start. So that kind of threw a little wrench in our plans.
But someone like that who signed an exclusive with Fanatics, an autograph deal, that is, under Fanatics, we can still make a trading card of him as long as he was still in the minors. So that kind of access and availability, I think is massive. Especially if you’re a fan of the Dodgers or a fan of Roki Sasaki, or in the Japanese market. I think that’s where you’re going to see a lot of the big benefits.
KS: So looking ahead a little bit, you mentioned the bigger checklist. You’re very well known for picking top notch prospects for your autographs, memorabilia in general. Who are some kind of deep dive MLB or baseball prospects that collectors should be keeping an eye out on that they may not know about yet?
LF: Yeah, there’s a there’s a couple guys. Last fall I had an incredible conversation with Chase Harlan of the Dodgers. Young kid who’s got a great head on his shoulders. A signing that probably should have gone pretty quick, took longer than the normal. Only because it was good conversation. We learned a lot about him. Just a really good conversation.
All these guys have talent, because if they didn’t, they wouldn’t be in the majors. I think a lot of the deciding point is, where is the mentality at? Where is the kids head? Where, oh, you know what? I’ve made it. I’m in the big leagues. I can kick back and collect my check. Or is it, okay, I’m going to work harder now. I’m working with the best of the best. I got to take advantage of these opportunities and really put my best foot forward. I think that’s the that’s the decisive piece on finding, okay, who are the next kind of diamonds in the rough? I really like Chase Harlan.
Staying on the Dodgers front. You know, they’re already good enough, the last thing they need is an insane farm system, but that’s really what they’re building. Emil Morales, he had a heck of a season. We got to talk to him at our spring training event that we just had a few weeks ago. It’s funny, his agent said his English is not very good. I think he was wrong on that end because his English was actually very, very impressive. The kid, he’s… you can see the leadership stuff in him, and I think he’s going to be special. His stats were very, very good last year. I think you’re going to see him kind of break out even more so this year, especially if he gets a chance at a full season.
So those are two names. Granted they’re both Dodgers. So, for those Dodger fans out there, hey, you should be excited. But those are two guys that really, really impressed me that are probably not on everyone’s radar right now.
KS: Gotcha. Yeah, that’s all the Dodgers need is even more talent.
LF: Exactly.
KS: You mentioned Vintage a little earlier, what else do you have in the upcoming pipeline for product?
LF: Yeah. So, Vintage like I said was released. We did dual autographs. We did triple autographs. We actually did triple autographs of Charlie Condon, Chase Burns, and Travis Bazzana. As we know, we do all on-card. When we were in Arizona, I thought this was the perfect opportunity to take advantage of seeing all those guys in one spot and getting these dual autographs and these triple autographs done. They came out absolutely amazing. We always keep a couple extra cards, just because stuff does get damaged. But just to give you an idea of what it looks like.
KS: Oh, that looks really cool.
This will be in Rips this summer. We did that with Bazzana, we did it with Chase Burns. We did some really cool stuff with these guys. A lot of stuff to get excited about. I think this license is going to make things really interesting. The product is going to be even better than what we’ve done in the past. We’re putting more investment in there and innovation. I think you’re going to see some really cool, innovative stuff from us. So, yeah, get ready.
KS: I’ll definitely be ready to see all that. I will get you out of here on this question. We talked about this a little bit before. The National is back in Chicago this year. The last two Nationals in Chicago, you’ve had your VIP party. Any plans to do so again this year?
LF: Yeah. The goal is to do it again. Every time the National is in Chicago, Dave and Buster’s has been phenomenal with us. A great partner. We rent out the entire place that Thursday of the week of the National there. It’s exciting. You get to play games with the athletes. The last one we had Jayden Daniels. It’s funny, at the time everyone was like Jayden Daniels, who’s that? And now today anyone who said “who’s that” is probably like “why the heck didn’t I get a ticket to go to that event?“
So, as I constantly say, sometimes you need patience with these prospects. You may not know exactly who they are, but we’re pretty good at identifying the next superstars. Just be patient. You may have to wait a season. Shedeur Sanders. Jayden Daniels. I got a long list of guys that people didn’t think were going to be anything. It’ll pay off for you.
KS: Yeah. No doubt. Lance, thank you so much for joining us today. Great to hear everything.
LF: Yeah. Thank you, Kelsey. Appreciate the time.
Hobby Musings: Onyx’s Lance Fischer
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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