When you go to a card show, there is one type of collector who makes you look twice. It’s not what they’re wearing or how loud they are; it’s what’s on their table. The 2025 New Zealand Card Collectors Show was held in the Kilbirnie suburb of Wellington. It was strangely located at the Wellington Indian Cultural Association on Kemp Street. One vendor’s set-up looked like it came straight from a sports memorabilia store in suburban Ohio.
American first-year cards. NBA prizms and NFL autographs in thick top-loaders. At a show where Pokémon packs and rugby cards are the normal money used, this table seemed to be in the wrong place. Still, it had the longest line of the morning.
Local man from Wellington had been building what he calls a “purely accidental” collection of American sports cards for about five years. He hadn’t planned for it to become a story. Like many others, he started by making a few small purchases. He was looking for American basketball cards that are hard to find in New Zealand without having to pay a huge shipping fee. One thing led to another. The collection got bigger. The shipping costs went up too, but he seems okay with that.
It’s not unusual for collectors from New Zealand to pick up tastes from other parts of the Pacific. There were more than 50 vendors and more than 150 tables at the 4th Card Collectors Show. The items for sale ranged from old cigarette cards to brand-new sports patches and from Pokémon to Yu-Gi-Oh. The group of card collectors in New Zealand is really big, and American cards have always had a small but noticeable place in it. A journalist from the area was looking at the Kilbirnie show over ANZAC weekend and was interested in the Wellington collector’s large collection and his willingness to talk about it for hours with anyone who would listen.
It wasn’t exactly breaking news in the next piece. But there’s something really interesting about why it hit home. While living in Wellington, I’ve noticed that some people like quiet eccentricities. One such person is a middle-aged man who has spent years importing American sports cards, keeping an obsessive catalog of them, and now selling copies at a Kilbirnie community hall. That being said, the story might have worked just because it was real and specific—the kind of slice-of-life detail that local news does best when it remembers to slow down.
It looked like the coverage caught something about collecting, maybe without meaning to. It showed the logic behind it and how a hobby can grow to fill any space you give it. The goal of this person wasn’t to become Wellington’s top American trading card expert. He kept getting things, putting them in order, and taking things out of poly sleeves at strange times. The love of American cards wasn’t a business plan or a brand. It was what happened when someone was too curious to stop.
He has already said that he will be back at the show next year. It’s still unknown if the local paper will follow. In Kilbirnie, on a gray ANZAC Sunday, as I walked by that table with cards spread out under the fluorescent light, I couldn’t help but think that some stories don’t need much making up. To be seen, all they need is someone to pay attention.
