Trading card collectors gather
May 18—CORBIN — Saturday, Sacred Heart Church opened its gym to the public to come view and potentially purchase from a variety of baseball, basketball, and football cards. There were even some Funko Pop and Pokémon cards, although the focus was on sports.
While other trading cards such as Pokémon and Magic the Gathering have soared in recent years, sports trading cards continue to hold value and are an age-old type of trading card that have been around since the 1800s. Sports cards became popular later in the 1860s when baseball became a professional sport. The cards were used to stiffen the back of cigarette packages. Later, collecting and finding baseball cards continued to grow, with most card collectors starting as children. They have been offered in everything from gum packages to the trading packs we are familiar with today.
David Fisher estimated that his card collection alone from the past two years was around $20,000 dollars.
"I collected as a kid. Then I got out of it. Then my son got me to pick up a pack at the beach and got me started all over again," he said, pointing to one of his cards that was on sale for $500. One of his holographic Tom Brady cards, and the most expensive, was on sale for $2,900. Like other card collectors who had their collection on sale at the church, Smith had his cards on sale, but said, "Me, my brother, and a couple of our friends decided in November or something to set up a shop. We combined collections instead of coming up with a large amount of money." Smith went on to explain that they already had a place for the store in East Bernstadt called Four Quarters Sports Cards.
