Author: Melissa Bridwell

There has always been a certain low-budget thrill to storage unit auctions; it’s the kind of thing that has a TV show for a reason. The majority of the time, buyers leave with broken appliances, outdated furniture, and a general feeling that they overpaid. Occasionally, however, something emerges that makes the entire circuit worthwhile. That’s exactly what happened with a recent auction of what seemed to be a forgotten Pokémon collection, and the details have been circulating in collector circles with the kind of energy that doesn’t go away very quickly. At first glance, the broad strokes are nearly unbelievable.…

A Brisbane collector’s home insurer is more knowledgeable about a locked display case in his living room than he is about his plumbing or roof. It contains sleeved, graded, humidity-sensitive Pokémon cards that have all been professionally evaluated and cataloged. The amount was greater than the house’s insured value when he sat down to insure the collection. Nevertheless, he proceeded with it. It seems ridiculous until you consider what the market has been doing in reality. A single Pokémon card, a PSA 10-graded Pikachu Illustrator, sold for about $16.5 million USD at auction earlier this year. AJ Scaramucci, the son…

In baseball collecting, there’s a point at which the pastime ceases to feel nostalgic and becomes something completely different. When Eric Mandelkern paid $17,080 for a Mets pitcher’s trading card in March 2024, it was that moment. Not a legend of the Mets. Not in the Hall of Fame. A single debut, a single sleeve patch, a card linked to a single night. It was an autographed Rookie Debut Patch card. Mandelkern, who is generally regarded as a disciplined collector who prioritizes quality over quantity, hasn’t really slowed down since. The RDPA program, developed in 2023 by Topps and Fanatics,…

The thought of losing a collection is almost intolerable. Not because of the money, though in serious Pokémon collecting circles, the money is very real; rather, it’s because of the true nature of a collection. It’s time. It is year after year of purposeful accumulation, decision after decision, card after card. When that type of archive is destroyed by a warehouse fire, the monetary loss is nearly insignificant compared to something more difficult to identify. Penrose, a suburb of Auckland, was the scene of precisely that kind of destruction earlier this year. Early on a Sunday morning, a commercial storage…

Women’s sports trading cards have long been found in a somewhat specialized but specialized area of the collector community. Instead of buying them because the market demanded it, fans did so because they cared. The announcement in March 2026 that Panini America had signed a multi-year exclusive trading card deal with the National Women’s Soccer League and its Players Association felt less like a business development story and more like a line being crossed because that dynamic is changing. Panini is more than just a minor actor performing a symbolic act. NFL, NBA, and FIFA flagship sets are produced by…

The moment a new high-end release is released, a certain kind of quiet madness takes hold in the trading card hobby. Boxes that were never intended to be investment vehicles turn into just that in a matter of hours or even minutes. The most recent example is the 2025 Topps Resurgence Football set, which has been both fascinating and draining to watch develop over the past few weeks. A single hobby box costs about $500 at retail. That’s not inexpensive by any measure, but it’s the figure that Topps established, the figure that appears in product announcements, and the figure…

Someone is engaging in what appears to be an odd pastime in a corner of Brisbane. He imports NFL rookie cards directly from American dealers, including Topps, Panini, and the entire spread, sorts them into binders, and waits. Without much fanfare, quietly, methodically. It’s likely that the majority of his neighbors believe he collects sports memorabilia in the same way that some people collect dust. However, if you take a moment to examine the evolution of Australia’s trading card market over the previous five years, the move begins to appear less bizarre and more like real foresight. Ten years ago,…

For someone who lives twenty minutes from Aviva Stadium, Ciarán Doherty’s shelves don’t seem to belong in his spare room. There are no framed jerseys, signed Premier League programs, or copies of the kits. Instead, there are slabs, which are the hard plastic cases that grading companies use to seal and certify sports cards. They are neatly stacked in rows, and most of the names on them sound more like they belong in Ohio than Dublin 4. Jim Brown. Walter Jones. Dan Marino. Doherty, a financial analyst in his mid-40s who has spent most of his career watching people make…

When you open a hobby box, you do something special. To count the packs, you cut the shrink wrap open and pull back the flaps. For more and more collectors in Toronto, that ritual now includes one more step: they quietly figure out how much the extra 25% Canadian tariff cost before the first card is even put down on the table. Still, orders keep coming in. Products that cost between $1,400 and almost $4,500 CAD are still moving out of distributors and into the hands of Canadians. These include cases of 2025 Topps Chrome Football, sealed Panini Prizm boxes,…

During every live box break, the chat stops for a while, usually between the fourth and fifth pack. Not because there is nothing going on, but because there could be. Those who break the rules slow down. The foil is wrinkly. A dozen or more people watching on their phones hold their breath over a piece of cardboard for a short time. Those feelings are what courts, lawyers, and consumer advocates are trying to put into groups right now, more than anything else. For decades, people who like the hobby have been able to buy “slots” that let them get…