One of my things is that various humans have left Earth over the ages - sometimes as slave labor, sometimes as companions. This has also happened among other races whose planets have not made formal contact - collectively, people from uncontacted planets are called "wilders" in the interplanetary language known as Trade. It's also how many alien races know how to play poker - a human taught a bunch of aliens while they were waiting backstage for an appearance on a show about weird alien races.

Possibly my pilot has come to Earth as part of a commission, but they're also after an artifact of cultural importance among Human Wilders - they want to get case lots of the board game Monopoly, which has become an important cultural artifact among human wilders.

Or something else.