I have known my friend Mike (real name withheld) for about ten years. We grew up together attending the same summer camp, and then we spent four more years in Montreal completing our undergraduate degrees.
For as long as I have known him, Mike has bought, sold, and traded sports cards.
And for as long as he has been collecting, I have been telling him to stop wasting his money. Of course, opening a pack of cards and hoping to find your favourite player is always thrilling – I did it plenty of times myself when I was much younger – but the commodification of the cards seemed pointless to me.
About two weeks ago, Mike briefly mentioned to me that he was going to Walmart to buy the new box of football cards. He told me that they are reselling for a lot of money, and that people are finding really cool cards in the boxes. He asked if I wanted to come along.
I was intrigued. I had been attacking this hobby as a profitable enterprise for years – yet it seemed that I had no idea how it worked. I didn’t think people went to Walmart to buy trading cards, and I surely didn’t think that people were reselling entire boxes.
So, I agreed. I told Mike he had me for a week. I asked him to show me how it all works. The remainder of this article will detail my experience over that week and with the industry in general.
On Tuesday morning, we went to a Walmart on St. Clair because Mike had heard from another collector that they were restocking the cards around noon. We arrived around ten o’clock – Mike said that people typically wait for hours lingering around Walmart for these cards. I didn’t believe him.
I could not have been more wrong.
There were about fifteen to twenty people – primarily grown men – lingering around the trading card aisle. When we arrived, these men greeted us with some of the dirtiest looks I have ever received. You would think I had just committed a war crime.
We waited for an hour and a half and ended up getting a few packages of the new “NFL Optic Football Cards.” Mike said we should sell them and profit. I said no way – I had just waited in a Walmart with fifteen grown men for almost two hours, there was no chance that I was not opening these cards. We opened one of the packages, and I must say, that it really was exhilarating. It felt like gambling – like roulette. We slowly opened each individual pack, making sure not to damage the cards, in hope of finding the elusive Joe Burrow rookie card (we didn’t find one). I was hooked – at least temporarily.
The next day Mike told me we were going to a Walmart on Lawrence because the same guy who restocked the St. Clair Walmart does the Lawrence one the next day. We arrived at eleven, and again, there were about fifteen people hovering around the store. Some of them I even recognized from the previous day. We waited about three and a half hours – the cards were never restocked. I was annoyed, but apparently, it’s extremely rare to actually time the restock, and we were just especially lucky the day before. As annoyed as I was, I still wanted more cards.
On Thursday I was to meet Mike at a Walmart by Jane and Wilson at 8:30 in the morning. The time worked for me – I preferred early mornings since I am, well, in law school for most of the day.
I beat Mike there and walked in around 8:35. As I was walking to the card aisle, I saw three teenagers with a cart full of cards. It must have been close to $1000 worth. When I got to the aisle, it was stripped clean – not a box or pack on sight.
I began to realize how this market works. First come first serve – whoever makes it to the card aisle at the right time on the right day buys every box available. Then they resell the majority of it, maybe keeping one box to open, or one to sell in a few years. It is next to impossible to actually acquire these cards at retail prices.
I checked the secondary market that night – Facebook Marketplace, Kijiji, eBay, etc. These boxes were selling for more than double the retail price. But what could be of such value in these boxes?
The answer to that question is apparently rookie cards, and the occasional rare card among otherwise worthless decks. A Michael Jordan card from his rookie season could be worth a couple hundred thousand dollars. The same card from three years later is likely worth less than fifty dollars – maybe.
Moreover, these cards are unbelievably rare to find in boxes. When Mike and I opened a “blaster box” as he called it, we pulled one Tua Tagovailoa rookie card. That was it, in terms of value at least. The resale value of these boxes is entirely based on the chance of pulling an extremely rare card.
Imagine that a roulette wheel could only be spun five times a week, and it was first come first serve to spin, and you had to spin at a very specific, but random time. Additionally, people can purchase the individual spins, and sell them to others at a ridiculous premium. Seems like a lot of time and money just to gamble.
On Friday, Mike told me we probably would not be able to find a restock – the employees usually stock by Thursday latest – but that we could try a Walmart on Keele. We went, waited two hours, and left empty handed, which appears to be the likely result of most of these Walmart trips.
Evidently, this industry is thriving right now. Boxes of cards don’t even make it to the shelves of Walmart before a forty-year-old man buys them all to sell on Kijiji. Cards – let me remind you, pieces of cardboard – can sell for a couple hundred thousand dollars but can also be totally worthless. This worries me.
When I was young, my friends and I would occasionally go to the corner store to buy a pack of cards or two, open them, throw them against the wall, and move on with our lives. This behaviour would be considered blasphemous today – it would ruin the value of the card. The commodification of these cards has removed everything enjoyable about them, in my opinion.
A few days ago, I received a facetime call from my younger cousin. He wanted to show me the players that he had just gotten from a pack of cards. Then he brought the phone to his television.
Turned out he was referring to the packs of virtual cards people open in the video game NHL 2021’s Hockey Ultimate Team mode. Apparently, you can pay a couple dollars, open a virtual pack of cards, and then either sell the card using the games virtual currency, or play with the player on the card in the game mode. I guess at least
I asked him if he ever bought any actual hockey cards. He said no without hesitating.
Grown men linger at Walmart for hours to buy the most recent cards. They then sell them for a profit. Who can afford to buy and pay more than double the retail price for a pack of cards? Adults.
This entire industry formed because of kids like me that grew up opening gas station packs, dug through their collection and discovered there was some value. Those kids grew up and became adults who do the same thing on a more expensive level. Today’s kids will not understand the enjoyment that comes with opening packs of cards and finding your favourite players – except maybe virtually.
This is precisely why this market worries me. These adults are going to continue to age, but there will not be a new generation of physical card collectors after them. In a market driven exclusively by supply and demand, that is going to present a large problem. The limited supply will remain, but there will not be demand, and card values will subsequently plummet.
I fear for the adults that have been religiously waiting at Walmart, and I fear for the million-dollar card collections that could become worthless. It looks like the sports trading card industry is a bubble on the verge of popping, and I don’t want to be there when it does.
I called Mike today. He told me he is planning on going to Walmart towards the end of the week and asked if I wanted to join. I politely declined – there is unfortunately no room in this market for someone like me who just wants to throw some cards against the wall with his friends.
