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 bad decisions with money based on their feelings, began collecting old NFL cards about four years ago. Not because he watched American football as a kid. He didn’t really. Most people in his area had never thought to look at this market, but he slowly learned that something was undervalued through online communities and late-night eBay scrolling. This is how a lot of European collectors got started.
He keeps going back to a simple contrast. For a few thousand euros, you can still get a Walter Payton rookie card that is in pretty good shape. It usually costs the same or more for a similar piece of soccer memorabilia, like a shirt that has been worn in a game, a signed program from a big game, or a rare sticker that is in perfect condition. The market for it is already very full. For those who don’t know, Payton is thought to be one of the best football players ever. The fact that his rookie card is in what Doherty calls “bargain territory” is what matters to him.
It’s important to know why that gap exists. The American card market has been dominated by baseball for a long time. This is due to decades of nostalgia, a strong collector culture, and baseball icons whose names are known for things other than sports. Babe Ruth and Mickey Mantle. Names that sound like myths. Baseball has always been bigger than football cards, and that’s exactly where Doherty thinks the chance is. Montana, Elway, and Bradshaw are some of the biggest names from the NFL’s golden age, but they don’t sell for as much as baseball stars do. At least not yet.
On the other hand, soccer memorabilia works in its own way. It’s huge on a global scale. Topps has been aggressively moving into this market, and it’s possible that soccer trading cards could one day be as popular around the world as baseball cards. The market is also growing up quickly, though. The costs of the best Messi and Ronaldo cards have already changed a lot. People have already made some of the “easy money.” Even though Doherty doesn’t think much of soccer collectibles, he does find them interesting. However, he is wary of markets where everyone agrees that something is valuable.
There’s also the bigger picture of sports to think about. It feels more like American football will stay the most popular sport in the US than like it will go away. In the next few years, flag football will be played in the Olympics. This will bring the sport to new people and may even lead to new collectors. The NFL’s own international push has been steady and methodical. There are games in London, broadcast deals are growing, and the number of fans keeps growing in places like, well, Dublin. It’s still not clear if that directly leads to continued demand for cards, but that seems like the right direction to bet on.
What’s interesting about Doherty’s method is not how many cards he has or what kinds of cards he has. It makes sense. He’s not a lucky football fan who really loves the game. He compared the two markets on basic factors, like how an investor might compare stocks, and came to the conclusion that the market for old NFL cards had more room to grow. He thinks that there has already been a lot said about the soccer market. It looks like the NFL card market is still in the middle of a boom.
It won’t be clear for years if he’s right. This kind of market doesn’t follow a schedule. But it’s hard not to think that he might be right when you’re in that Dublin spare room full of plastic slabs and American names.
