There's no debating the hobby’s current reality.
Sports and trading cards are simply more expensive than they used to be.
Cards at the high end are hitting record prices at a velocity the market hasn’t experienced since the heights of the COVID-19 pandemic, with 25 topping $1 million so far in 2025 to outpace all of 2023 (11) and 2024 (seven) combined.
Even the low end feels pricier. If low-dollar base cards aren’t feeling more expensive alone, rising prices for supplies, shipping costs and transaction fees have tightened everyone’s collectibles budget.
Sealed boxes are more expensive, too. Blaster boxes that once retailed for $20 are now $30 and more. Hobby boxes retailing for $100 or less are largely unheard of, and there seem to be more ultra high-end products than ever.
The rising cost of the hobby has been a fear among collectors for what feels like forever, but the topic felt even more legitimate when Upper Deck president Jason Masherah opined on the matter Tuesday.
Upper Deck President Jason Masherah posts a worrying message about the state of the hobby. pic.twitter.com/Qj6KHMpi3y
— cllct (@cllctMedia) October 28, 2025
“Everything speculative is up right now: The stock market. Bitcoin. Trading cards ... and it's pricing some collectors out,” Masherah wrote on LinkedIn.
“Here's what the data shows: 50% of consumer spending in the U.S. is coming from 10% of the population. Rich people are carrying the market. Not just in cards, but across every category.”
Masherah has a point — it’s problematic when a small part of the population is accounting for a large percentage of consumer spending because, as he writes, that works until it doesn’t.
He’s also correct in that some collectors are being priced out of the hobby. But that trend is nothing new, and some even point to Upper Deck as a major culprit when it delivered the first set of premium cards in 1989 for 99 cents per pack.
Upper Deck raised the bar again in 2003 when it released the first packs of Exquisite Collection Basketball for $500 each.
Collectors shouldn’t blame Upper Deck for the rising cost of trading cards — another manufacturer would have taken the hobby there if UD hadn’t — but it’s not hard to see the hobby’s definition of expensive has changed substantially over the last 35 years.
The goalposts are constantly moving, and what we believe is expensive today would be considered cheap for the next generation of collectors.
“Sports cards have always had speculation built in,” Masherah wrote. “You collect a rookie hoping they become a Hall of Famer. But what's happening now is different in scale. And when markets become this speculative, they become fragile.
“I'm not saying the sky is falling. I'm saying we need to be honest about what's happening. This isn't sustainable growth driven by collectors who love the hobby. This is wealth concentration driving prices that most people can't participate in.”
It’s hard to argue the market isn’t increasingly speculating with sports and trading cards. At the highest level, the influx of cash, businesses and entrepreneurs entering the space hoping to generate revenue rather than participate in the experience is undeniable.
But again, the view of cards as appreciating assets is far from new and far from exclusive to the high end.
Yes, the dynamic has shifted some when even GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen is mentioning trading cards as stored value. But most collectors view cards as something that can appreciate in value, and that always has been a selling point — even if it wasn’t the main attraction.
Is increased speculation impacting the hobby? Of course.
Card Ladder reporting records for online sales in three out of the last four months tells us collectors are spending more money than ever. The number of transactions logged by Card Ladder has increased at a much faster rate, however, which could be the result of collectors purchasing more low-end cards than ever, too.
According to Card Ladder’s Industry page, collector spending has jumped 112% from roughly $182 million in September 2023 to more than $387 million last month. The number of transactions per month has more than doubled over that period, jumping from more than 2 million in September 2023 to more than 5 million in September 2025.
Card Ladder’s Industry page isn’t a complete log of the entire market, but it can deliver a wide-angle view of growth, and it’s the everyday collectors driving the majority of transactions, not the big spenders in the top 10%.
The index, of course, doesn’t log cards sold in-person at shows or transactions through the manufacturers and retailers, which, as Masherah points out, has become difficult to manage for some.
Though Masherah’s argument that most collectors purchasing $1,000-plus boxes aren’t doing it for fun is likely valid, it’s important to remember very few collectors are engaging with the hobby at that price point. It might seem different when sifting through the vacuum of social media, but most collectors are buying retail products for retail pricing or not at all.
The recent price bumps for those retail configurations have more than irritated collectors, but can hobbyists truly argue the space has gotten too expensive when products instantly sell out at retail pricing and then flip for 200% or 300% more on the secondary market?
From the manufacturing perspective, one could argue retail products aren’t expensive enough when the typical product life cycle has been trimmed from more than a year pre-COVID to a few months or less in the current landscape.
There likely isn’t much overlap between the top spenders and the collectors hunting for blaster boxes at Target, so while it’s easy to blame the high-end buyers for rising prices, low-end collectors haven’t done themselves any favors either.
A valid concern for the current market is how accessible the hobby is for kids and, to a larger extent, pretty much anyone who isn’t middle class and up. For the hobby to last and grow, it has to usher in the next generation of collectors and tap into new demographics — something that becomes increasingly difficult as the entry point becomes more expensive.
Growing the hobby and making it more accessible are always admirable objectives, but the reality is sports cards aren’t essential purchases. As much as many of us consider collecting to be a core part of our life and identity, cards aren’t milk, bread or eggs. They can enhance our life, but they aren’t the fuel we need to survive.
Relatively speaking, there are plenty of low-end products that are affordable if collectors are willing to hunt for them. Collectors can also purchase cheaper unlicensed products or simply choose not to buy new wax at all. Buying the exact cards you want, after all, has always been the best method for building a great collection.
Major manufacturers will continue to raise prices because their objective is to make money, and collectors will continue to pay those prices until the value is no longer palatable. Card makers have increased prices as the acquisition of autographs and memorabilia has become more expensive, and though many collectors consider those required ingredients to make a good product, there has been pushback as prices have risen to offset those costs.
Collectors should rightfully be concerned that prices of cards continue to go up, but those same collectors must also be willing to force change by wielding their wallet as the industry’s most powerful weapon.
The rise of repack products is one signal releases from the major manufacturers have become too expensive or don’t provide enough value, but that hasn’t moved the needle enough when box breaks are more popular than ever, and collectors remain open to buying sealed products from the secondary market at a markup.
The sports and trading card hobby’s current pricing might not feel good for the average collector, but the hobby has always been a privilege, not a right. Rising prices might have been caused in part by the top 10% of spenders, but the majority of the hobby is made up of everyday collectors.
It’s those collectors who helped get us here, and it has to be those collectors who change our current trajectory.
Ben Burrows is a reporter and editor for cllct, the premier company for collectible culture. He was previously the Collectibles Editor at Sports Illustrated. You can follow him on X and Instagram @benmburrows.