Ive been around this hobby since I was 6 years old, buying some of my favorite Twins players as a kid, biking to my local card shop and opening cards with my brother and dad. Im now a month away from 40, and Im still here, with some breaks in between, trying to figure out my place in an ecosystem that is enjoying a boom that I could have only dreamed about. In addition to participating in the hobby, Ive written enough about sports cards since 2007 to fill multiple books. Since 2007, multiple things I have done have required public responses from card manufacturers and entities, including my extensive work on fakes and forgeries. Although my reach was small in the grand scheme of the hobby, I was featured on ESPN, Deadspin, and other sites multiple times. In the most marginal sense of the word, you could say I was one of the original card influencers – before that was a thing, and before it was important.
Today, my influence is small enough to fit on the tip of a needle, as my work and multiple kids has forced me into a place where my love of writing was trumped by a need to live my life. All the fun we used to have on twitter and youtube has been replaced with mega influencers and investors changing the conversation to a focus on money and what they are buying and selling. My focus in the hobby media was always talking about the cards and how they were presented. The new dialogue is all about the deals – buying and selling cards that have become the hottest investment piece since Beanie Babies in the 90s. With the gigantic trajectory of value and interest, a new culture of content and business has been created to match the demand of the population. As people have seen this take place, a divide amongst the previous inhabitants has also risen.
You know what’s interesting though? I enjoy a lot of the content. I love economics, I love cards, and putting them together strikes a chord with me that I never expected. The problem is, most of the biggest voices in the hobby have seen their content explode in popularity to a similar degree as the cards themselves. Tens of thousands of people are hungry to consume sports card content, especially well produced content. As expected, with that attention comes two very specific elements that have made this newfound landscape so problematic in nature.
The first is power. If you have reach and an audience, you have power. Power to change people’s minds, power to move a population, and the power to form an agenda. The thing about agendas, is that they are rarely done for the good of the audience you are influencing. Most of the time, its to further the growth of power one has over their audience, or demean and belittle those who disagree with it. Most influencers will need a steady growth of audience to maintain their production and revenue, and without creating a cult like response to their content, its hard to do that. Therefore, the agenda becomes the content, and its clear that most collectors will have a very dynamic reaction to that – either they love it or they hate it. There are very few indifferent people. Oddly enough, this is the goal, as people who love the agenda will surround themselves with it, and people who hate the agenda will similarly consume the content just to trigger their own emotional responses of hatred. Its a vicious circle that leads to a culture shift, one that has taken over the lexicon we use every day.
The second thing is money. From what I can tell, many of the biggest influencers also have big portfolios of cards, something that in other markets is a required disclosure. Trading cards have only recently entered the national consciousness in terms of investment potential, and other investment assets have tons of content built around them as well. The difference is, the government regulates how those influencers are able to showcase assets they have a position in. If someone on TV is talking about a stock they own, they must disclose that publicly. For cards, the asset group hasnt reached a maturity level where that is required, despite some of them being seven figures in value. As a result, influencers in cards can pump up their owned assets without punitive responses about disclosure. This power has led to resentment from the base of audience they hope to target, but also that love / hate response they use to build new viewership.
Honestly, this is where the influencers and investors have become the new targets for hobby trolling, as people start to revolt against the way they have changed the market overall. The funny thing is, this happens in every market, and the response is not only expected, its the goal. Americans are some of the most emotion driven people on the planet. They want things to be so black and white, as to fuel the tribalism we see when there is a major point of view. The question is, for a hobby ive been around for 30 plus years, is this what I want to happen? That’s where Im not so sure.
This is where the second population of people, the investors, come in. If you ask some of the people that have joined the hobby over the last 2 years, many of them will likely believe that investors are a recent phenomenon within the market. This could not be further from the truth. Going back to the 1950s, people have placed value on trading cards, and if you have gone to a national convention before 2015, you saw the people who have invested in that value setting up year after year. Investors have always seen trading cards as an asset, to a point where we had a similar boom in the 1990s on the back of big sales of collectibles across the country. My dad bought boxes of junk wax that sit in our garage to this day, thinking they would be as valuable as the cards he collected as a kid.
The difference between the 1990s and today is clear, mainly due to the scale in which cards are invested in, but also the scale in which people have made and derived products and services around that part of the market. Today’s hobby has entire business models built around tools for investors, and beyond that, a dedicated community on social media to communicate with like minded individuals. For the first time in the history of hobby investing, the people who are the main players arent huddling in back rooms at big card shows, they are out in the open, sharing what they are doing. Not only that, but the content they create is really fucking interesting. There are even documentary films in the works that talk about how this all came to be.
I remember living in Los Angeles around the time I started writing about cards, and talking with some of the dealers who made a living investing in cards. I thought they were crazy, because the dialogue around cards was so small. I remember getting 2,000 hits a day on my blog posts and being proud of my accomplishments. Now, most of the content creators are driving 200 times that without putting in much effort to furthering any new conversation. For them, as mentioned, the conversation isnt about the cards, where there are limited topics to cover. The deals and money are center stage, where there is an unlimited amount of content to deliver. They have integrated sports commentary as well, given that production on the fields of play contribute so much to potential value.
With such a giant shift in the way people talk about cards, it shouldnt be a surprise that there is a negative reaction from people who hate that this is what the hobby has become. Even though most of the people who revolt against the new world order are very vocal about their feelings, most still operate with the assumptions in value that these influencers and investors have brought to their benefit. Because almost every collectors trades, buys and sells cards, the market value derived from the growth in the hobby does exist to the benefit of all collectors. The so called ‘haters’ will still sell, trade and buy their collection pieces the same way the investors due, while taking pot shots at their methods. Its very odd to witness.
Similarly, these individuals label themselves with a gatekeeping term that gives them a pass to do so. Because they are a ‘true collector’ they feel that their actions are justified to operate in the same manner as the people that they despise. Personally, nothing triggers an emotional response in me more than hearing someone volley ‘true collector’ status around like its actually a thing. Gatekeeping sucks, and as much as investors have drawn ire from the hobby, some of them have actually figured out how fun collecting can really be. Like there is no real way to classify what makes someone a ‘true collector’ versus any other type of hobby participant, there is no reason to make this a derogatory accusation either. I dont understand the desire to keep people out, especially when card value has become the primary thread in this hobby for almost 100 years. More people bringing demand to a market is a good thing, overall. Period.
Does this mean that we should not shine a flashlight on the misdeeds of people who seek to exploit the new found glory? Absolutely not, but the bitterness and resentment seems empty. Americans love celebrity culture, but loathe the way celebrities can spend their money in insane ways. I feel the same thing is true for celebrity card culture – a fascination with their hobby lives, while loathing the impact that investor spending has changed the market. Its so weird to see in action.
Overall, people seem to hate what they cant understand, and for a lot of reasons, there seems to be a general lack of understanding across the hobby that has perpetuated a negative view towards influencers and investors. Some of them absolutely deserve it for a lot of the reasons described above. They are either obviously pushing an agenda, furthering their own investment portfolio, or both. Others seem to be genuinely passionate about their hobby love. I think the discussion around both in the hobby is far from over, but its riveting to see people try to formulate a narrative that fits their own personalities. Some are very successful, others not as much. For me, the hobby is changed forever, and still as fun as it was back when I started writing in 2007. I dont think that will change anytime soon, either.
