By Faith Smith
The COVID-19 pandemic came with an increase in new interests and hobbies. In March 2020, that aside from the toilet paper hoarding, other shelves were also becoming bare.
What happened to all of the sports and camping gear, bikes, paint, sunscreen, sand buckets and crafting supplies? Normally, stores would not have issues with restocking these items, but families and individuals craved new activities to keep them occupied during the numerous months they were quarantined.
Most of the miscellaneous items that were bought out during the start of the pandemic have successfully been restocked by the proper warehouses and distributors. They have not had the problem of an imbalance of supply and demand since.
However, there is one product that distributors have not been able to keep up with since the pandemic, which goes unnoticed by the common bystander. The product is typically lodged between checkout isles, hidden behind registers, or are administered at customer service centers. This product is trading cards.
Trading cards, or collectible cards, are small cards made of paperboard, which usually contain an image of a character or athlete. Examples of these cards are “Pokémon,” “Magic: The Gathering” and a wide variety of sports cards.
Along with the new obsession with activity, when people started working from home, a lot of people were craving sports, as there were no live sports on TV and that was such a huge part of their lives.
A lot of people started shifting to sports cards and they began to dust off their old binders and boxes. They even started selling some of the older cards online on eBay, and even Facebook Marketplace, realizing there was a huge demand for sports cards once again.
A report published by the website “Sports Collectors Daily” outlines data released by eBay on trading card sales for 2020, where it showed significant increases compared to the prior year. Sales of Pokémon cards jumped 578%. EBay trading card sales jumped 142% from 2019 to 2020 in the United States.
It is remarkably evident that the passion for trading cards is thriving. This is great because, before COVID-19, Pokemon cards were still sitting on the shelves. Now, people are blazing through restock of trading cards in almost every store in the country.
What is not so good is that the Oswego, Fulton and Clay Walmarts have had to limit the amount of product each person could purchase at a time to one. When distributors come to stock the shelves of new cards, there are already people lined up to grab what they want before it is gone. Distributors have even tried switching up their schedules and moving the cards to different locations in the stores to throw off customers, but they still get ambushed when they are trying to work, which is disrespectful.
A lot of people do not even play the cards like they are supposed to. They just collect them and resell them. Where we have seen many small businesses suffer due to the pandemic, hobby shop owners have been benefitting.
Nostalgia plays a grand part in card collecting, as well. Although some are into the hobby for its enticing business, the common theme seen in many card collectors and hobby shop owners alike is nostalgia.
People enjoy that feeling of being a kid and the excitement of opening that package of cards at their fingertips. It makes them feel alive, and it keeps their minds focused when everything around them in the world is constantly changing.
Many hardcore collectors already felt this way prior to the pandemic, but for those returning to their childhood hobby during these COVID-19 times; the pandemic’s initial effects helped magnify the importance of embracing the little things in life.
Photo via Flickr
