Author: Melissa Bridwell

A small thing happens in a stadium that most people don’t notice. There is a new player on the field for the first time. Maybe the crowd moves, the cameras pan, and then the game goes on. But there is an MLB official very close by watching that jersey sleeve very carefully. What comes off that arm after the last out is now worth more than most people’s homes. That is not an exaggeration. A patch autographed by Paul Skenes was sold on Fanatics Collect for $1.11 million in March 2025. Dick’s Sporting Goods bought it from the secondary market…

You might find something in a London or Chicago middle-sized card store right now that wasn’t there two years ago: stacks of Japanese Pokémon packs lying out in the open on shelves, cheap and easy to grab. There is no lottery. There was no sellout in minutes. Only cards. For collectors who remember how crazy things were in 2020 and 2021, this small change seems big. The story behind what’s happening is pretty simple, but it takes place over two continents and over several years of excessive speculation. The Japanese Pokémon card market, which grew a lot during the pandemic,…

When you hold a Pokémon card that you paid a lot of money for and wonder if it’s real, it’s a little unsettling. Not because the card seems sketchy. Since it doesn’t. That is the exact issue. Professional Sports Authenticators (PSA), the company that grades trading cards for collectors all over the world, said in a 2025 report that Pokémon TCG cards have become the most popular target for trading card fraud in the world. It’s not just the largest. Through a large margin. Ryan Hoge, president of PSA, said it best: Pokémon “dwarfs everything else.” In 2025, 56.3% of…

Most people who watch the NFL Draft feel like time slows down a bit between when a prospect’s name is called and when they take a picture with Roger Goodell shaking hands. This year, that same moment went by faster than anyone thought it would for collectors. As the 2026 NFL Draft began, Topps did something that not even its own team could fully explain after the fact. As each prospect walked out on stage, a Topps photographer took a picture of them. The picture was then sent directly to an on-site printer, and within 60 to 90 seconds, the…

When something truly new comes along, there’s a certain kind of electricity that moves through the collector community. Not just a new set with fresh art, but something that feels like an event. This kind of set came out with the Pokémon 30th Anniversary set, which is called 30th Celebration in Japan. It comes out everywhere on September 16, 2026, and pre-orders at major stores have been moving so quickly that it’s hard to ignore. Before you think this is just hype, you should find out what’s actually in the box. In this set, each booster pack has six cards…

There is a type of collector who doesn’t make themselves known. They don’t brag about their auction finds on social media or at dinner. Come to swap meets early on the weekends, ask lots of questions, and always have a notebook with them. These days, they carry a phone with a well-organized spreadsheet on it. This type of collector in Auckland has been quietly putting together what most people in the hobby would call an amazing collection of old trading cards. It’s now worth well over six figures and took about ten years to put together from almost nothing. Many…

A 45-year-old man walks alone through the darkened aisles of a Best Buy that is closed after midnight, surrounded by display models and box sets, waiting for the store to open so he can be the first person in line for Pokémon cards. The scene looks almost like something out of a movie. It sounds like the beginning of a joke. It wasn’t. It was early Wednesday morning when Patrick Keys was arrested at a Best Buy store in Pasadena, California. Employees watching a live security feed saw him walking through the store hours after it had closed. When the…

Soon after the Eagles won Super Bowl LIX, tickets for the Philly Show went on sale. The website didn’t just slow down. It went down. In every way. That is not a sales pitch; it is a signal. An important part of the hobby had changed, and Philadelphia was right in the middle of it. Since 1975, The Philly Show has been on the air. Something like a card show takes fifty years, which is a long time. It takes place at the Greater Philadelphia Expo Center and covers more than 140,000 square feet. More than 300 dealers from more…

In the world of sports cards, there is a certain amount of excitement right before a big event drops something unexpected. Collectors keep the secondary market listings up to date, Discord channels light up, and people talk quickly. Just like that, when Tom Brady did a live card break on Fanatics Collect, he casually broke down the internet for 45 minutes straight. It began as a livestream for advertising. Brady was introducing the athletes who will be performing at Fanatics Fest 2026, which will take place this summer at the Javits Center in New York City. It was pretty simple:…

A certain kind of wound can only be caused by trust being broken. The slow, quiet kind, not the sharp kind from a stranger on the street. The kind you don’t feel until your credit score drops sixty points and you see that $6,500 has been charged to a PayPal account you never opened. There was a church member in Memphis who put his trust in Steven Flockhart, the pastor of 901 Church, which has two locations in Millington and Bartlett. Flockhart, who used to be on “American Idol” and NBC’s “The Voice,” was arrested on charges of theft of…