Next Frontier Certifications, operating as NFC Authenticators, announced a new chip-based authentication platform for graded trading cards on May 4. The Marietta, Georgia company says the system is designed to help collectors verify slabs and identify counterfeit holders. The company is led by founder Christopher Longshore, a 34-year veteran of the sports card business. Longshore…
Topps locked in a 126,501 print run on its first-overall Fernando Mendoza Topps Now card after the 72-hour order window closed Sunday, the largest single-card total the on-demand line has ever produced for an NFL Draft release. The 15-card set was Topps’ first licensed NFL Draft product under the multi-year deal that took exclusive football…
Fanatics announced the layoffs back in November. 286 workers at the Oak Creek warehouse near Tampa. The doors close July 31. People started leaving March 1. That news is months old. The reason it matters now is what is happening on the other side of the company. April 1 was the day Fanatics took over…
On January 14, Whatnot dropped commission to 0% on the portion of any single order above $1,500. The 8% rate still applies to the first $1,500. Sports card singles — not breaks — plus a handful of other singles categories. Breaks are excluded. That’s still the rate today. 105 days in. eBay’s published trading-card fee…
Shareholders in Panini Group, the Modena, Italy-based trading card and sticker company, are expected to decide by the end of 2026 on an external investment that could include a full or partial sale of the business, according to an April 2 report from Reuters. Approximately two dozen potential buyers have expressed interest in the family-owned…
Topps and the National Football League opened a three-day Collector Destination event Thursday in Pittsburgh, coinciding with the start of the 2026 NFL Draft. The activation marks the first fan-facing event tied to Topps’ return as the exclusive NFL trading card licensee after Fanatics Collectibles, the NFL and the NFLPA announced the multi-year deal on…
Fanatics Live averaged $17,867 in GMV per stream in April 2026. In September 2024, that number was $8,255. GMV — gross merchandise value — is the total dollar value of everything that sells during a stream before the platform takes its cut. It’s the top-line number that tells you how much product moved, not how…
Back in 2025, Darren Rovell published another “sports card bubble could burst” piece. The evidence, at the time, was a Jay Cutler card hitting $12,000 on eBay. The headline on cllct reads “Bubble could soon burst for lower-end cards.” It was, roughly, the sixth or seventh time he had written this piece since 2022. Darren…
$1.11 billion. That’s how much collectors have spent on Fanatics Live since the app launched 30 months ago. A quarter of that total came in the last 109 days. Our data pull on April 19, 2026 covered all 154 shops currently on Fanatics Live and every stream since the platform launched in October 2023 —…
Whatnot is hosting its first-ever in-person seller event on April 25 in Austin, and it’s already sold out. The inaugural Whatnot Seller Summit runs a full day at The LINE Austin on 111 East Cesar Chavez Street, starting at 8 a.m. A waitlist is open for anyone who didn’t grab a spot, and the company…
A Google review documenting Topps Chrome Football release-day hanger box prices in San Antonio drew a public response from Sports Cards Plus, which is pricing the product at twice MSRP.
Fanatics Collectibles has confirmed that 2025 Topps Chrome Football will release on April 15, 2026, marking Topps’ first officially licensed NFL product since 2016. Pre-orders opened April 3, 2026, through the official Topps website and authorized retail partners. Hobby and Jumbo boxes will be available via EQL raffles, while Mega, Value Blaster, and Hanger formats…
A hobby shop owner just took a public swing at Fanatics Collectibles CEO Mike Mahan. Fanatics Collectibles CEO Mike Mahan. The allegation: Fanatics charges a small group of breakers $150,000 a month to be in Topps’ medallion program, then hands that group 60% of first-wave product while the other 90 breakers are left fighting for…
PSA employee Chris Carlin delivered oversized Topps card displays to two Burbank, California hobby shops this week, posting photos of the drop-offs on X. Carlin wrote that he and colleagues were allowed to take the blow-ups home from the recent Topps Conference, and that the displays belonged at the shops they visited. The first stop…
Santiago Sports storefront in Matawan, New Jersey. Santiago Sports and owner Tyler Santiago are being sued in New Jersey over a stolen Tom Brady rookie card. The story was first surfaced by @Auburn35 on Twitter, who is featured on Sports Card Radio’s Hobby Influencer Rankings. Plaintiff Riccardo Dipilla filed the civil complaint in Monmouth County…
The SA Collectors Expo returns to San Antonio, Texas on April 25–26, 2026, at the SA Shrine Auditorium, with more than 200 vendor tables of sports cards, memorabilia, comics, toys, and gaming cards. Show hours are Saturday 10:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. and Sunday 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Vendor setup begins Friday, April 24,…
The official Topps social media account posted — and then quickly deleted — an image of a purported Victor Wembanyama Superfractor that came from an active eBay listing run by a seller based in China. The card in the post was not authentic. The listing it was pulled from had been flagged in collector circles…
Fanatics is folding its Fanatics Live app into Fanatics Collect, consolidating its breaking, marketplace, and vault services into a single platform. The standalone Fanatics Live app will be phased out. The move brings live card-breaking streams directly inside Fanatics Collect alongside the company’s existing marketplace and vault features. Collectors who currently use both apps will…
CardsHQ, located at 3101 Cobb Parkway SE in Smyrna, Georgia. Logan Ward, a NASCAR card collector inducted into the PSA Collector Hall of Fame, publicly criticized CardsHQ following a visit to the Atlanta-area shop on April 4, calling the experience “unfortunately a bust” in a post on X that drew more than 67,000 views. What…
Ryan Van Oost, one of three co-founders of CardsHQ, is leaving the Atlanta-based card shop. Geoff Wilson confirmed the departure in an Instagram post on Monday. Wilson, Van Oost, and Carter Musgrave launched CardsHQ together in 2023 and opened the 14,000-square-foot retail location at 3101 Cobb Parkway SE in February 2024. The shop was billed…
Upper Deck’s National Hockey Card Day returns Saturday, April 11, with a first for the 17-year-old event: PWHL cards will be included alongside the traditional NHL set. Free packs are available at participating Certified Diamond Dealer locations across the United States and Canada. The new PWHL Powerhouses insert set features players from the Professional Women’s…
In 1960, Topps executive Sy Berger dumped hundreds of cases of unsold 1952 baseball cards into the Atlantic Ocean. He couldn’t give them away for a penny each. Today, a single card from that batch sells for millions. This is the story of the most expensive mistake in hobby history.
Mr. Wonderful is in the hobby now. Whether the hobby wanted him is a separate question. In August 2025, Kevin O’Leary co-purchased the Jordan-Kobe dual Logoman for $12.93 million — the most expensive sports card ever sold at auction. Then he had Tiffany & Co. encase it in 101 carats of diamonds, 10 carats of…
Cooper Flagg’s 2025 Topps Chrome base RC (#251) is sitting around $25 raw. That’s after the kid just dropped 51 and 45 in back-to-back games — becoming the youngest player in NBA history to score 50. 96 points in 48 hours. First rookie since Iverson in ’97 to go 40+ in consecutive games. The base…
PSA has announced it will open its first full-scale authentication and grading facility in Europe in Frankfurt, Germany, with operations expected to begin in the summer of 2026. The Frankfurt facility will grade trading cards onsite. Other collectible categories will continue to be shipped to PSA’s primary facility in the United States for grading. PSA…
A New York federal judge has dismissed a consumer class action lawsuit alleging that Fanatics, the NFL, NBA, MLB, their players associations, and OneTeam conspired to monopolize the sports trading card market. The suit was brought by five individual collectors who claimed the consolidation of league licenses under Fanatics resulted in inflated card prices across…
Fanatics Collectibles, the NFL, and the NFL Players Association announced Thursday that pre-orders for 2025 Topps Chrome Football are now open. The set releases on April 15 — Topps’ first fully licensed NFL product since 2016. Hobby boxes are priced at $360 and are available on Topps.com and through authorized hobby retailers. Each hobby box…
As of April 1, 2026, one company controls every newly issued licensed sports trading card in America. Fanatics — through its subsidiary Topps — now holds exclusive, long-term licensing deals with the NFL, NBA, and MLB, plus their respective players’ associations. Six deals. Up to twenty years each. No competing manufacturer. No alternative product. For…
2026 Topps ’91 Silver Pack SuperFractor Roman Anthony ROOKIE 1/1 — $10,200 via Fanatics Collect Roman Anthony’s 2026 Topps ’91 Silver Pack SuperFractor 1/1 just sold for $10,200 on Fanatics Collect. That’s the biggest 2026 Topps Series 1 sale of the day — and it wasn’t close. Here’s why that number matters. The similar comp…
Roman Anthony 2026 Topps #189 Base RC ~$2 raw Bobby Witt Jr. 2022 Topps Update #US100 Base RC ~$2 raw These two cards are the same price. Roman Anthony’s 2026 Topps base RC and Bobby Witt Jr.’s 2022 Topps Update base RC are both sitting around $2 raw on eBay right now. One of them…
Matt Allen paid ,000 for the Jasson Dominguez superfractor in 2022. PSA asked if it was the most important card of 2020. Then Dominguez got sent to AAA.
Scammers use real Beckett cert numbers on fake autographs. And even when authenticators examine items in person, they can’t agree — PSA authenticated a Lindbergh autograph, rejected it, then authenticated it again.
Brian Wolfe was seen as a trusted breaker. A guy people knew from industry conferences and Panini parties. Now he’s being accused of scamming collectors out of thousands through empty packages, ghosted messages, and shipments that never arrived. Multiple hobbyists went public this week with receipts showing a pattern: deals that only accepted CashApp or…
A New York card shop pulled a Cy Young 1/1 cut signature from 2022 Topps Series 2, but Steve Grad and other authenticators immediately questioned its legitimacy.
Whatnot just got hit with arbitration demands claiming it operates an illegal gambling operation. The platform says it’s nonsense. The hobby says it’s nothing new. But here’s what very few people are talking about: Fanatics Live does the exact same thing. St. Louis attorney Paul Lesko filed 15 arbitration demands against Whatnot on behalf of…
We covered a Facebook dispute between Tidewater Cards & Collectibles promoter Michael Campbell and another show organizer over competing event dates in North Carolina. After that story published, we received an overwhelming number of messages from vendors who’ve worked Tidewater shows. The complaints weren’t about scheduling — they were about how the shows are run….
Earlier this week, we reported on Fanatics giving breakers cases of 2025 Bowman’s Best Baseball while collectors got “sold out” messages. Now collectors are raising questions about what those breakers are doing with their inventory. According to a tweet circulating in the hobby, FilthBomb—a breaking operation that was allocated hundreds of cases from Fanatics at…
This week, we published an article about fake Beckett authentication stickers being sold on eBay, allegedly by someone connected to the company. The story detailed suspicious eBay accounts and collectors losing thousands on items with forged COAs. Steve Grad—who recently left Beckett Authentication after 24 years—responded. In a video posted to Sports Card Radio Clips‘ YouTube channel, Grad…
Junk Wax Sal—ranked on SCR’s Hobby Influencer Rankings—posted what thousands of collectors are thinking: “Fanatics, can you suck any harder? I add Bowman’s Best to my cart the second it goes live. After numerous errors, get a 20 minute wait to checkout. By the time my 20 minutes is up, says 10 boxes aren’t available, your…
An authentication specialist is calling on federal authorities to investigate what he says is a massive counterfeiting operation involving fake Beckett certificates of authenticity. Roman Pioner, who runs CheckCOA, posted a detailed thread on X documenting what he describes as “the largest single fraud case I have ever seen in the hobby.” Pioner claims a…
A customer is raising concerns on social media after cards from a WeTheHobby break disappeared following PSA grading. VWSmaltz posted on X that he participated in a WeTheHobby break on Fanatics Live on January 9. His cards were sent to PSA for free grading, but he didn’t realize until February 9 that he never received…
A photo of Mets owner Steve Cohen appears in the DOJ’s Epstein files. Cohen’s spokesperson denies any relationship. Cohen now owns PSA, Beckett, and SGC through Collectors Holdings.
The 2026 Topps Collector Kit Wave 1 sold out fast at .99 SRP, creating an immediate secondary market. Here’s what’s in the box and whether it’s worth the markup.
A card breaker is suing a customer who spent $24,000 on breaks, then charged back $18,000 through TikTok’s payment system. The Ballers Bank filed suit against Nicholas Albin in North Carolina court, seeking $42,000 total. The complaint was filed February 25, 2026. What Happened Albin bought boxes and packs through The Ballers Bank’s TikTok breaks…
Sports card collectors are hitting a breaking point with grading companies, Fanatics pricing, and breaker practices, according to a YouTube creator whose recent video is resonating across the hobby. Mike, who runs the channel “Baseball Collector,” argues the hobby itself is healthy and growing, but the industry side is pushing collectors toward a revolt. “The…
Cooper Flagg just set a new personal record: a Topps Chrome Sapphire Edition auto sold for $366,000 on Goldin Saturday. It’s the highest price ever paid for a Flagg card. It’s also not even half of what Wembanyama’s top card went for. The Gap Flagg’s top 5 sales: $366k – Chrome Sapphire auto (March 7,…
A group breaker on TikTok posted a warning this weekend after buying what turned out to be an entire lot of fake PSA slabs. ACBreakz posted to Discord Saturday evening that he bought the cards in person, only to find out every single slab was counterfeit. “Every card is counterfeit,” he wrote. “The PSA numbers…
A hobby shop owner’s frustration with the retail vs. hobby product divide sparked debate on X this week after a high-end hit from a Target blaster. Alex Altenhof, owner of Michiana Sports Cards in Granger, Indiana, posted his complaint Tuesday morning: “As a hobby shop owner, it bothers me so much when a product hit…
Topps NBA MVP Buyback Program: How It Works — What Is the Topps MVP Buyback Program? Topps is buying back 2025 Topps Chrome Basketball cards featuring the player who wins the 2025/26 NBA MVP award. If you pull a card of the MVP winner, you can trade it in for store credit at participating hobby…
A Whatnot seller is defending himself after Boston Card Hunter (Nick Andrews) and @lememe_james posted a viral clip showing him cracking open a PSA 10 Panini Prizm and telling the recipient they were getting a “damaged raw card.” The video shows @yojackdylan breaking the protective case with his hands and removing the blue Prizm card…