Trading cards feed collector frenzy
Trading cards are in the midst of another boom, but exorbitant prices, scalpers and violence mar what should be a fun time for all.
For Carter Ferguson, who’s been collecting sports cards “since I could pretty much walk,” opening his own store was undoubtedly a childhood dream of sorts.
But it was also a matter of right place, right time, the 21-year-old Douglassville resident admits of his new venture.
“The way the market is going, I figured I’d give it a shot now while I’m young,” Ferguson said from behind the counter at Carter’s Cards, located just off of Route 422 in Amity Township.
From baseball, football and basketball to Pokémon and Magic: The Gathering, sales of trading cards are booming again, driven in no small part by a feverish secondary market on ecommerce websites such as eBay.
In many instances, it’s these resellers and not necessarily serious collectors who are purchasing as much stock as they can in the hopes of making a quick buck online — possibly even from buyers who in turn hope to turn around and resell the items themselves.
The frenzy over cards has resulted in shortages, which in turn is leading to reports of violence at retail chains such as Target and Walmart, causing the former to suspend in-store sales after a high-profile incident in which a fight outside a Wisconsin store led to a gun being drawn.
“It’s really crazy,” Ferguson said. “And, if you’re new to the hobby, it’s very challenging to get started in because everything is so high and everyone is just trying to flip and flip and flip.”
As for why now is where the story gets a bit more complicated, though pretty much everybody is in agreement that COVID-19 has something to do with it.
And whether cards are worth some of the exorbitant prices people are paying, only time will tell.
Pokémon mania returns
While people are quick to blame the pandemic for the explosion in interest, there does seem to be at least a little bit of cyclical nature at work in the industry.
Card collecting was already in the midst of a modest resurgence back in 2019, according to contemporary reporting, while, today, there is a line of thinking that it’s specific products like Pokémon that are generating the most buzz.
“The market is definitely hot — more intense than it used to be a few years ago,” said Max Hirneisen, owner of Symbiote Collectibles in West Reading. “But Pokémon is in its 25th anniversary, so they’ve been doing a lot of marketing and are pushing the product.
“They’ve also been printing a lot of really good stuff.”
Scott Fasnacht, store manager at Golden Eagle Comics & Games in Muhlenberg Township, agreed Pokémon is “one of the hottest things going” right now.
Yet, even accounting for Pokémon’s popularity and increased visibility, Fasnacht indicated the shortages are abnormal.
“It’s still mostly attributed to the pandemic and people having more time to engage with hobbies,” Fasnacht said. “It’s more of a supply issue. I think there is enough Pokémon going out, there’s just such an increased demand.”
Hirneisen also believes the pandemic may have had people longing for a sense of nostalgia while they were cooped up at home, creating renewed interest from
people who had stopped collecting.
“No matter how much Pokémon I get, it’s never enough,” Hirneisen said. “That’s even with me calling multiple distributors all the time, begging them, asking ‘What do you got?’”
Hitting a home run
While a milestone and marketing push partially explains away the Pokémon card shortage, there’s no similar accounting for the fervor over sports cards, which are hard to come by even for many stores.
Now located along Fifth Street Highway, Golden Eagle doesn’t offer as much sports stuff as it once did, tending to focus more on comic books and board games these days, but the store does dabble in it — or would like to, anyway.
“That’s another situation where there’s not nearly enough product,” Fasnacht said.
Similarly, Symbiote Collectibles on Penn Avenue tends to sell more toys and video games, though Hirneisen was looking into sports cards.
“Sports, I can’t even buy ‘em from my distributor for a reasonable price now,” Hirneisen said. “I looked into buying some sports cards, thought maybe I’ll try it out. I called my distributor, it’s $500 a box. “I’m like, I’m good.” Back at Carter’s Cards, where sports are more Ferguson’s forte, he pointed to conditions brought on by the coronavirus pandemic triggering the current market, suggesting the formula might be as simple as downtime, plus stimulus checks, equaled opportunity.
“I think with the pandemic and everyone having a little bit of extra money, it’s just taken all of this to the next level,” Ferguson said. “People had more time on their hands to go through their old cards and research and get involved in this.
“People are looking into cards, they’re looking to invest — and it’s a better way to invest than, sometimes, stocks. If you know what you’re doing, you can make serious money doing it.”
Are cards worth the money?
The question is not whether you can make money selling trading cards, but whether they’ll actually hold their value.
A brand new, unopened box of cards purchased from one of the major chain stores can easily sell for double or triple MSRP, or manufacturer suggested retail price, online. Collectors can also open packs and score a single card that paid for the entire box and then some.
“You can pull these out of a $5 pack,” said Hirneisen, showing two Pokémon cards. “That’s a $100 card and a $250 card right out of the pack. It makes it where certain packs, certain cards, you pull that right card, you can really get something.”
Those prices aren’t set in stone, however. If more and more of those cards are reprinted — which remains a distinct possibility — their value decreases.
“I’m selling to people that are buying from me speculating that it’s gonna be worth more money,” Hirneisen said. “There’s definitely a lot of that.”
“It’s tough to tell,” Ferguson adds about long-term value, noting even a cursory knowledge of the history of trading cards will tell you how flooding the market can impact collectors. “There’s always a chance it gets mass-produced like the 1970s to the early 2000s.”
Fasnacht shared a slightly different take than his peers, however.
“What something is worth is an interesting question,” Fasnacht. “I’d say the way the market currently exists, yeah, it is worth that. You’ve got people readily willing to pay that.”
Of course, that comes with a warning that the market will change. “We’re probably at about as much hype as we’re gonna see in the market at this point. Probably soon we’ll see it cool off.”
Good or bad for the industry?
Stores like Symbiote Collectibles and Golden Eagle have been fortunate not to see violent outbursts from customers — in part because they charge above MSRP, dampening competitiveness, and also because cards are kept behind the counter, eliminating stampedes in store aisles.
“It can a little crazy on a release day, but we know our prices,” Hirneisen said. “With a smaller shop like this, people are less likely to just go nuts. We’ve had a couple things, but nothing like you hear some of these other places.”
Carter’s Cards probably hasn’t been open long enough to see those types of disappointing reactions from grown adults.
But not very far removed from his own childhood, Ferguson does worry how the current market hurts young collectors. To combat this, he’s taken to giving some of his loose cards away.
“I let kids take free stuff, just cards that aren’t worth a whole lot to get some kids involved,” Ferguson said. “Especially if they buy something, I make sure I let them pick out a handful of cards to bring home with something, keep them going, because that’s the whole next generation of this.
“It’s not gonna be a thing if no one is interested in it. And if they can’t get involved in it, it’s gonna be hard for it to grow.”
There doesn’t seem to be much debate that high prices are going to drive certain collectors out of the hobby, be they children or adults.
At the same time, making the product more or less expensive isn’t going to change the fact there’s skyrocketing demand.
“Unfortunately, there’s not much we can do,” Fasnacht said. “If I price below market value, I sell it all to flippers anyway.”