Author: Melissa Bridwell

The NFL Draft has gone from a meeting in a hotel room behind closed doors to the Fountains of Bellagio in one of the more quiet changes in American sports history. It was quiet until Las Vegas got a hold of it. It doesn’t happen at all in one version of this story. When ESPN asked Pete Rozelle, who was commissioner at the time, about showing the draft on TV in 1980, he reportedly said only one word: “Why?” He didn’t understand why anyone would want to watch some people on the team read names off a list. He agreed…

There is a stack of Pokémon cards waiting to be looked at somewhere, and it might be yours. Not lost or stolen. Getting ready. After about 14 million other people. That’s what PSA, the biggest card grading company in the collectibles world, had to deal with in the middle of 2026. The company graded 2.5 million cards in June alone, which is a record by any measure. Even so, it had to close down its four most popular submission levels because the backlog kept growing too fast for the output to keep up. Take a moment to think about what…

There’s something off about walking down the aisle of Father’s Day cards. Every year, the same jokes about drunk people, bad driving, and being useless in general pile up on the racks. You take one, smirk a little, and put it back. You might laugh. If you’re being honest, you might have had a vague feeling that you could have done better. One story this Father’s Day was able to put that small, nagging feeling into words. It wasn’t an essay or a campaign speech; it was just a bunch of cards saved over decades by a dad who never…

When PSA said in May that it would be investing $200 million, collectors all over the world knew that something big was about to happen. What no one quite saw coming was the speed with which it happened: a rush of submissions so big that it broke the line. Just a few weeks after the May 14 announcement, PSA’s backlog had grown to about 10 million cards. Just seeing that number would have made people wonder. But on June 9, the company quietly changed that number to almost 14 million. The jump wasn’t sneaky. It was clear that the initial…

There is a certain kind of shock that comes from not the crime itself but from the person who did it. People were shocked when the Very Rev. Aidan Smith, who was dean of Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in downtown Pittsburgh, was arrested outside of a Walmart in Economy Borough on February 27. It wasn’t just the accident that shocked them. It was the picture. An Episcopal priest, 42 years old, walked out of a big-box store with 27 packs of baseball cards hidden under his clothes and in a cardboard box. Walmart security had already seen him and warned them.…

First, it’s important to note that this probably doesn’t make any sense. A playing card with a cartoon yellow mouse on it that was about the size of a business card just sold for $16,492,000. Goldin is one of the most well-known auction houses in the United States for collecting things. After 41 days of bidding, the winning bid came in. As soon as the hammer hit the ground, confetti all over the place, and a Guinness World Records official made it official. This is the Pikachu Illustrator card, which most people who aren’t card collectors have never heard of.…

In every new market, there comes a time when those who are paying attention and those who aren’t start to differ in important ways. In the world of trading cards, that moment for women’s hockey may already be here, but most collectors won’t know about it because it’s happening in the background. The Professional Women’s Hockey League and Upper Deck announced earlier this year that they would be working together on trading cards for a long time. This made what seemed like an inevitable partnership official. Even though the PWHL had only been around for nine weeks, a game between…

When something unexpected happens at a card convention, there’s a certain kind of electricity that flows through the room. Not the planned excitement of a celebrity appearance or the buildup of hype from weeks of promotional emails, but something more natural and quiet. The kind of chatter that starts at one table and spreads until two strangers across the aisles are comparing notes. This is pretty much what happened when a single Topps Resurgence drop showed up at Fanatics Fest this summer. Within a few hours, it was all anyone could talk about. To give you an idea, Fanatics Fest…

If a player breaks through at just the right time, it sends a certain kind of electricity through the sports card hobby. It took place with Patrick Mahomes. It took place with Josh Allen. It’s happening to Jaxson Dart right now, in a quiet but clear way. The second-year quarterback for the Giants went to MetLife Stadium on a Thursday night and beat the team that had just won the Super Bowl. Not in a lucky, grinding way, but convincingly on national TV. It was the first time in years that Giants fans could really breathe out. It was like…

The noise is the first thing that hits you when you walk into one of these events on a Saturday morning. They take place in convention halls in mid-sized cities and hotel ballrooms in suburbs that most sports reporters never go to. There was no roar of the crowd or the whistle of the referee. Instead, there was the low, buzzing energy of hundreds of people hunched over card tables, bargaining prices in whispers while holding slabs of graded plastic up to fluorescent light like they’re checking for diamonds. It seems like the ways that football fans spend their weekends…