Collector, CEO Brian Lee turns passion for collecting into successful hobby company at Arena Club
When Brian Lee attended his first Dodgers game when he was 8 years old, he immediately fell in love with LA first baseman Steve Garvey.
Lee loved Garvey so much he rode his bicycle two hours to Fountain Valley Cards and Comics just to buy Garvey’s 1971 Topps rookie card.
“I rode all the way there without telling anyone,” Lee said. “Probably not the smartest thing to do at 8 years old, but it was a different time and different era. But I rode my bike all the way there and I bought my first Steve Garvey rookie card, and I still have it.”
Lee has been collecting trading cards ever since. He owns an extensive card collection of iconic Asian athletes, such Shohei Ohtani, Ichiro and Sadaharu Oh. He also has quite a few cards of Baseball Hall of Famer Derek Jeter, his close friend and founding partner at Arena Club, one of the hobby’s thriving young businesses.
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Lee started Arena Club in 2022 as a way to jump full-bore into the hobby he loves.
“I want others to have the same experience that I have had and the enjoyment that I have had collecting cards and being part of this hobby,” Lee said in July at the National Sports Collectors Convention in Chicago. “And I want this hobby to be as strong as it is today well into the future.”
Arena Club began in 2022 as a new card-grading company and sports card marketplace. It has evolved into a cutting-edge company built around its digital Slab Packs.
In July, Arena Club launched new physical Slab Packs as a supplement to its digital products and announced a new partnership with eBay that makes the world’s largest sports card seller the exclusive online marketplace for physical Slab Packs. Each physical pack, which are released weekly, contains one high-end grail or chase card or another unique card.
“We launched our physical versions of the Slab Packs and it’s off to a great start,” Lee said at The National. “We are trying to emulate the kind of experience you can get digitally with the excitement of the chase and we provide fully transparent checklists on those Slab Packs so you can see what you are chasing. Unlike a lot of the repacks you see even at the show—where there is no real checklist, there are no odds published, you don’t know where the cards are—we are being as transparent as we can, and eBay has partnered with us to provide that transparency. You can get physical cards; we can mail you the box. They are similar, you are ripping physically or digitally.”
The partnership with eBay is a big deal for the three-year-old company, which is still trying to make its mark in the hobby.
“We are super excited to be partnering with eBay, the world’s largest marketplace for collectibles,” Lee said. “Who wouldn’t want to partner with eBay? It increases our sales volume, but it also brings a bit more legitimacy to what we are doing to partner with such a world-renowned organization like eBay. It lends legitimacy to Arena Club and shows the world we are ready to provide that type of experience and transparency to our customers.”
Lee is a highly regarded entrepreneur who runs three other companies—he is Co-Founder and CEO of The Honest Co., Co-Founder and President of LegalZoom.com, and Managing Director of BAM Ventures. He is pleased with the growth and progress of Arena Club in a competitive market that features such industry giants as eBay, Fanatics and Collectors/PSA.
“I think we have a lot of room to grow and we have a lot of execution to be done,” he said. “As a CEO, you really have big dreams and you have visions and making those dreams happen isn’t all that easy, so it’s all about execution and it’s all about your team, and I believe we do have a very strong team and we are executing, but we just have a lot more to go. As a CEO, all I see is hurdles that we have to overcome as we go forward.
“It’s very competitive, and we have a lot of folks copying us, so that kind of validates what we’re working on. We’re excited to be in pole position and we’re excited to be leading the charge in these digital packs since we are the originator of the Slab Packs.”
Lee gives a lot of credit for the company’s growth and success to Jeter, who he met a few years ago at a charity event and again at a speaking engagement. Jeter was so impressed with Lee that he told him to keep him in mind if he was interested in starting a sports-related business.
“We talked to him about Arena Club and he fell in love with the idea and said let’s do this,” Jeter said. “That was just over three years ago and we’ve been off to the races ever since and he’s been a wonderful, wonderful partner.”
Lee said the former Yankees legend, a card and memorabilia collector himself, “has done everything you could ever ask of from a partner.”
“He has done a lot of promotions for us, marketing, he’s at all our board meetings. He’s very strategic, so we talk every day. We talk strategy every day. He’s not just a name, for sure.”
Arena Club’s next big venture is promoting its own card show. The Arena Card Show at the Fresno (Calif.) Convention Center Sept. 26-28 will be Arena Club’s foray into a hobby entity Lee loves. He hopes to expand the show across the country and maybe even globally.
“I love card shows,” Lee said at the NSCC, the biggest show of the year. “I think the most fun part of collecting is collecting with my son. My best days when my son was growing up was spending days at the card shows with him. I really miss those days and I want to have a card show and I want everyone to experience that with their families and have a great family outing and have a lot of fun collecting cards.”
That’s Lee’s mission, sharing his passion and joy for collecting with others, especially a new generation of collectors.
“It feels really good seeing how many kids are here at The National,” he said. “It’s so much fun just watching them buy and sale and trade, running their only little business.”
Lee can relate. Collecting inspired him to not only become a collector, but a highly successful businessman.
“I started three other companies and, fortunately, they have all been successful,” he said. “So this my fourth venture. This is the one that I have been having the most fun with because it is my passion, it is my hobby. So turning a hobby into a business is a lot of fun. I highly recommend it for anyone.”
Jeff Owens is the editor of SCD.