The Hobby’s New Trajectory + How Big Is This Market Really? + Are We Underestimating Its Size?

Joe Poirot puts Jeremy on the spot. As a longtime hockey collector, how does he put the astonishing $1.281 million Macklin Celebrini 1/1 Young Guns sale into context? The answer has less to do with one hockey card and much more to do with what seems to be happening across the entire trading card world. Something feels different in 2026. The hobby has been growing for years, but Jeremy makes the case that we may have recently entered a new trajectory. Celebrities and athletes are increasingly involved. Fanatics continues pushing trading cards further into the mainstream. Card shows are booming. Enormous amounts of money are entering the space. And just hours before the show, Jeremy encounters two kids running a lemonade stand who already know exactly what they're going to do with the money: Buy a hobby box. So how big is this thing actually becoming? Chris McGill brings some real numbers into the conversation, while the panel debates whether Fanatics and the rest of the industry have actually "10X'd" the hobby, whether the old baseball "innings" analogy ever made sense in the first place, and why cycles may be a much better way of understanding where trading cards are headed. Then we start looking at the money. The publicly tracked secondary market represents hundreds of millions of dollars in transactions every month, but what happens when you add everything that isn't captured there? Local card shops. Card shows. Grading fees. Breaking. Live selling. Private transactions. Retail wax. Supplies. Other marketplaces and all of the businesses operating around the cards themselves. Could the true trading card economy be dramatically larger than most collectors realize? David Chase brings some caution to the optimism, Joshua Adams explains why he deliberately tunes much of the business side out and simply enjoys collecting, and Joe challenges Jeremy's idea of the hobby, industry and other segments all existing inside one larger trading card ecosystem. It's a wide-ranging conversation about where cards are right now, how we got here and whether this latest wave of growth really is different from the ones we've experienced before. Check out The Hobby Spectrum at thehobbyspectrum.com and take the assessment to discover where you fit in the hobby. Try AuctionWire at auctionwire.ai and use promo code SCL to receive two free months. Check out Card Ladder and use promo code SCL. Buy Pops and Comps: Truths, Insights, and Psychology Behind the Numbers That Drive the Sports Card Market, available now on Amazon. And, as always, subscribe to Sports Cards Live on YouTube, turn on notifications, and if you enjoy the podcast, follow, rate and review Sports Cards Live on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices