Iconic Sports Agent Leigh Steinberg Talks Childhood Collection, Sharing The Hobby with His Son and Memorabilia
Leigh Steinberg is quite possibly the most iconic and important sports agent in history.
The legendary agent has represented over 300 professional athletes, covering sports such as football, baseball, basketball, boxing, and the Olympics during his 50-plus year career.
The super agent has represented a record eight NFL 1st overall draft picks, as well as 64 1st round picks.
Steinberg's client list reads like a who's who of elite NFL quarterbacks and professional sports royalty. The star-studded list includes Patrick Mahomes, Troy Aikman, Steve Young, and Ben Roethlisberger, to name a few.
Steinberg is credited as the real-life inspiration for the sports agent played by Tom Cruise in Cameron Crowe's 1996 film Jerry Maguire.
The Hall of Fame agent, philanthropist, author, and speaker recently sat down to talk about his love and admiration of sports cards and collecting
Tony Reid- Did you collect sports cards as a kid? If so, who and what was the focus of your collection?
Leigh Steinberg- I had grown up with trading cards. I was a passionate collector as a young kid. Growing up a trading card guru and collector, our whole life was governed by when each set would come out. It had two primary purposes, one was to collect baseball, basketball and football cards and get the whole set. You would check them off to make sure you go the whole set. The second was to use in the spokes of my bicycle and create noise as I rode down the street. At that point football cards were five cents. You got a stick of gum and a bunch of cards. If you kept buying it always resulted in a massive amount of doubles and sometimes triples. You had to have a whole network of friends to trade cards with. Sometimes you put them into individual teams. Sometimes you put them in numerical order as they were numbered in the set. There were all sorts of ways to organize them. I had some really valuable cards that got lost. The interesting thing was that we equated everything, in terms of economics, by the cost of a pack of trading cards. If we would go to a movie back in the 50’s when it was thirty cents, and the movie turned out to be bad we would say what a waste of time, we could have had six packs of cards. We equated all values back into trading cards.
TR- Your first trading card came out in 1991 in the Star Pics set. You are pictured staring intently at the camera, and it appears as though you have a Houston Oilers helmet in your lap. How do you feel about that card?
LS-When my first trading card came out, it was a part of a rookie set, Star Pics. I thought it was hilarious that someone would do a card of me. It was the penultimate recognition that you achieved some status as a professional. It was fun. I would get hundreds of them in the mail from people who wanted me to sign them. They were all very courteous and all the rest. I used to be able to tell the difference between collectors and fans. Collectors would simply ask you to sign your name and fans would ask you to personalize it. If someone was keeping it for themselves there was an inkling of that because they would ask you to personalize it to John or whoever. If they just asked me to sign my name they might have ulterior motives.
TR- Years later, in 2016, you had numerous parallels and versions of cards in the Topps Allen & Ginter set. You have a base card, an autograph, a relic, a mini, a jumbo, and everything in between. How special was it to see yourself again on cardboard so many years later?
LS-(Laughs) Once again I thought it was fun. They issued a couple cards. I had multiple cards. The way you know your cards are appreciated is when they arrive in the mail with great regularity. It became almost a daily task to sign the cards that came in. Being on a card might be a validation that you are of interest to someone.
TR-The card collecting gene found your son, Matt. How special is it to be able to share such a great hobby with him?
LS- My son Matt, who was a great trading card collector, mostly football but some baseball. We would go down and now the price of packs can be $30 or the price pf packs could be $100. His presents every year were trading cards. It was so funny. He would rip open the pack. I just spent $50 on cards and he would say ‘Dad we just made $35!’ My son would do that and scour through zealously and find the values. When he got a rookie card or a jersey card it was high times in the Steinberg house.
TR- You are the most accomplished, influential, and successful sports agent in history. What has been your experience in dealings with sports card companies specifically?
LS-When Panini came out with their first football card we made sure to get down to Dallas and meet them. That led to Paxton Lynch getting a bigger rookie card deal than Jared Goff and Carson Wentz in 2016. Panini sponsored Patrick Mahomes’ draft party. There was big signage there. Where someone would pay for the coverage on draft night became yet another application.
TR-Being a devoted member of the hobby for decades, how much has the industry changed since during your time in sports cards?
LS- Trading cards have always been a big part of my life. I love trading cards. When you asked how it’s changed, first of all the pricing from my youth of 5 cents now my son is asking to buy a $120 pack. I ended up investing thousands and thousands of dollars in my son’s collection. Then all of a sudden it led to the phenomenon of the NFTs. Any imagery could become valuable. It was another way to create, in essence, cards, with various applications. It became similar to the art market where if you bought a one of one that added a certain value.
TR-What similarities do you see between sports card industry and the professional sports industry in general?
LS-I have always said that our business rests on the irrationality of middle aged men. We can expand that because we all turn back into our childhood when faced with a compelling piece of memorabilia. A card is a dramatic manifestation of that.
TR- We can see part of your office in many of the inspirational videos you post. Do you have a collection of memorabilia and memories from your decades at the top of the industry?
LS-Are you kidding? People come here like it’s a museum. We have the original trading card up. We have the Allen and Ginter card up. We have porcelain figures. I have signed balls, signed helmets and signed boxing gloves from Lennox Lewis. Here is a picture of me and Warren Moon when I inducted him into the Hall of Fame. Here is a picture of me and Cuba Gooding, Jr. from the movie Jerry Maguire. Here is a picture of me on the set of Ocean’s Eleven with Julia Roberts. Here is a picture of me and Obama. Here is a signed helmet from a Troy Aikman signing. Here is a game ball that KiJana Carter gave me. There is every type of helmet imaginable. The books I have written are displayed. I have my plaques from the California Sports Hall of Fame and the Jewish Sports Hall of Fame. People like to come here like people go to a sports museum. At the end of the day, you have to be clear that however invaluable or memorable any of these pieces are they could be broken, lost and you can’t be in deep grief when it happens. I just got an award from the Derrick Thomas Foundation and it showed up broken. It was all crystal. You have to, at a certain level, not get too attached to the things
Tony Reid spent more than a decade covering combat sports at the highest level. He has written hundreds of articles and conducted hundreds of interviews about sports collectibles for such publications as Beckett, Sports Collectors Digest, and Sports Collectors Daily. Reid worked full time at a sports card shop in Central Pennsylvania for a number of years. A lifelong collector, Tony treasures his rookie card collection of star players in baseball, basketball, and football. If you want to discuss the greatness of Michael Jordan, Bo Jackson or Ken Griffey Jr., you can reach him at @tonyreidwrites on all social media platforms