Clearly, the trading card boom isn’t over yet. Auction house Goldin Auctions has already broken its annual sales record with over nine months remaining in the year.
Goldin reached $100 million in sales for 2021 after generating $8.5 million from the March edition of its monthly auction series. The auction featured two Michael Jordan Fleer rookie cards that sold for just under $500,000, Ronald Acuña and Kobe Bryant cards that went for just under $400,000, and an autographed Jay-Z card that sold for $105,780, a record for non-sports trading cards.
“People are increasingly viewing collectibles as valuable alternative investments over the long term,” founder and executive chairman Ken Goldin told Front Office Sports. “We’re also seeing a ton of interest from international customers, which is a market that we’re just starting to tap into.”
- The company raised $40 million in February in an investment round that included Kevin Durant, Dwayne Wade, Mark Cuban, Bill Simmons, Logan Paul, and YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley.
- Topps recently signed its longest and largest deal with the Los Angeles Angels’ Mike Trout that is expected to last his entire career. In August, an autographed Trout rookie card sold through Goldin Auctions for $3.94 million.
As for what’s fueling the enormous growth in trading cards, Leore Avidar, founder and CEO of trading card platform Alt, cites the “25-year effect.”
“Generally people start liking and collecting things when they are 8 to 14,” Avidar told Bloomberg. “Then in your 30s, people start getting disposable income, and they get nostalgic for things that remind them of their youth, and you see this in a lot of different kinds of assets.”
