re: 2026 Sports Cards and Memorabilia Thread

TCG is almost all the business now. Sports cards are down big. TCG is basically half or more at every show I go to now.

Looking at the reports, in the past week,

TCG-305,000
Baseball-9,200
Basketball-8,200
Football-7,000
Non-Sport-2,200
Hockey-1,400
Soccer-1,200
Wrestling/MMA-300

Also, the $80 level might be stopped as well, but I can’t confirm that.

I’ll keep my Michael Jordan slam cam psa 9 as my only card

The rip a hobby box for $1200 get $140 in cards that takes months to sell isn’t cool.

Neither is the break spots for hundreds or thousands that could yield 0 sellable cards

I stick to collecting what makes me happy. I collect LSU stuff both players and memorabilia. I also collect TPC sawgrass the Players Championship stuff because it's an event I love and its 15 mins from my house. I also collect Jacksonville jaguars stuff because I have been here since we got the team. I used to try and collect the hot rookies in different sports but I just gave that up due to the fact I was just buying and resaling and really didn't enjoy that. I love looking for deals and rare vintage stuff in the things I mentioned early. Just keep it simple and enjoyable. I don't do it for the money.

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It has just become a case hit chase, buying blasters for them to go straight in the trash if the nuke isnt there. My wife also hates it like a mf

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I stopped collecting almost all modern outside of a few PC cards and haven't even opened a blaster in a few years. I knew around 2023 that Downtowns were going to start being inserted in packs like candy once they became so popular. I bought a nice earlier year Brady DT that I wanted and never bought another one made after 2023 even to sell. Once you start making rare cards no longer rare, their popularity is going to die off. Manga and color blasts seem to still be pretty rare but DT's and even Kabooms now are kind of a joke.

I think you have to flip because the box prices are such.

You get in and want to do more ripping so try to recover some of the cost. If I look back on all the hobby boxes I’ve ripped very few were great.

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I agree with you, but would also add 99% of the new sports collectors that started since covid are also just in it to flip. Its kind of annoying for a long term collector but it did bring back a lot of card shows, so not all bad.

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For sure. One good thing for long term collectors though is that if you had nice cards pre covid and held on to them your collection made a significant bump in value

All the more card shows is a good thing too. Just is so weird going to a card show now and more than half the booths are Pokemon. I get it, but honestly I don't get it as well It's literally the same characters over and over in every set just different artwork. I don't see how it's THAT popular.

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I’m totally getting out of the hobby. Unfortunately not worth the time and effort. Goalposts constantly moving

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The "Hobby" is multi faceted. You should stop ripping and buying to flip or whatever and just collect what you like.

Thats fine, but i hate when people shite on "The hobby" when that is not what the hobby is, its some other grotesque part that was created.