Author: Melissa Bridwell

You can sense the unique weight of items that have been deemed worthy of preservation on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., somewhere between the Wright Brothers Flyer hung from the ceiling of the Air and Space Museum and the Hope Diamond sitting in its glass case of the Natural History Museum. Throughout its nineteen museums and extensive research collections, the Smithsonian has always been in the business of determining what is important enough to preserve—what is labeled, cataloged, and made public. By that standard, the choice to include a set of trading cards in its Education Collection is modest…

There is most likely an untouched 1999 First Edition Pokémon booster box in a storage facility located in a suburban area of New Jersey, sealed within a climate-controlled unit. When it was brand-new, it cost about $90. These days, the price could range from $400,000 to many times that, depending on the seal’s condition, the printing run, and the auction firm handling the sale. The owner may or may not be aware of this. When they put that box in storage 25 years ago, they most likely had no idea that it would eventually beat all index funds, the majority…

Watching GameStop, a company for which most people had already written a quiet eulogy, try to swallow eBay whole is ironic in a certain way. Avoid nibbling on it. Don’t collaborate with it. Purchase it for about $55.5 billion at a 20% premium, even though its current value is less than 25% of that amount. It’s the kind of move that causes you to put down your coffee and take two looks at the headline. According to reports, Ryan Cohen, the CEO of GameStop and the man who turned Chewy into a massive pet supply company before most people considered…

A small deck of laminated cards, each printed with a theorist’s name, a school of thought, and a two-sentence synopsis of concepts that took some scholars entire careers to develop, may be seen sitting next to a student’s casebook and highlighters in some American law school classrooms these days. feminist legal theory. critical theory of race. realism in law. Economics and law. It was all purposefully shrunk to the size of a baseball card. The theory trading card format, which was developed over the past few years by a few progressive legal educators and is currently making its way into…

On most afternoons, students will spread small illustrated cards across their notebooks at a table in Columbia University’s Butler Library, much like someone might sort a deck before a poker game. These aren’t poker cards, though. Each one has a simplified framework on the back and the face of a theorist on the front, such as Derrida, Spivak, Bell Hooks, or Foucault. A syllabus is being annotated by someone nearby. Another person is discreetly attempting to exchange a first-edition Judith Butler card for a duplicate Althusser. It sounds almost ridiculous. However, as you watch it develop, you get the impression…

Before her Tuesday night class, Carmen, a sociology instructor at a Rio Grande Valley community college, laid out forty laminated cards on a folding table. Each card featured a face, such as Durkheim, Goffman, or Bell Hooks, along with a few facts on the reverse. Before entering that room, the majority of her students worked full shifts. The assigned textbook had not been purchased by any of them. Some had never owned one before. However, they took the cards, flipped them over, and began conversing. All across the nation, underfunded universities and community learning centers are silently reenacting that scene…

Once you hear it, a certain image comes to mind. Somewhere in a suburb outside of London, a young Lewis Hamilton is buying football packs and Pokémon cards with his weekly allowance. carefully flipping them over. examining the bolded names, the gloss, and the edges. That kind of information is easily written off as a clever origin story for a press release. However, those who have followed Hamilton closely over the years are aware that he hardly ever performs nostalgia. When he said something, it usually meant something to him. This is likely why, at least not yet, Lewis Hamilton’s…

Renata Hollis, an eighth-grade civics teacher in a mobile classroom outside of Columbus, Ohio, lays out a pile of glossy cards on a folding table. A small portrait, a color-coded badge in the corner, and a distinct claim are carried by each. Some are classified as logical fallacies. Others enumerate propaganda strategies, rhetorical devices, or the names of particular cognitive biases. Her students lean in, half suspicious, half curious, the way teens do when something looks like a game but has a faint homework odor. More American classrooms are using these theory trading cards than anyone could have predicted a…

For many years, inquiring about women’s soccer in a card shop felt almost like an apology. Owners would shrug. Perhaps somewhere in the back, hidden beneath boxes of basketball prizes and football rookies, was a Parkside set. Perhaps not. Women’s sports seldom made the cut, and the shelves told a tale about what the hobby considered important. That narrative is beginning to shift. The National Women’s Soccer League and its Players Association announced a multi-year partnership with Panini America on March 11, making the collectibles giant the league’s and its Players Association’s exclusive trading card partner. The agreement was reached…

Nobody could have predicted that a card game created by a math professor in 1993 would become the main source of funding for one of the biggest toy companies worldwide. And yet, here we are. Wizards of the Coast carried Hasbro on its back, with Magic doing the majority of the heavy lifting, according to the company’s most recent earnings, which were released in February. In just the fourth quarter, revenues increased by 31%. That’s an odd place to land for a brand that used to be synonymous with lunchroom oddities and basement hobbies. It is nearly impossible to visualize…