Published September 30, 2025 | By Alyx E, Founder of Collectors MD

The hobby has always been about joy, nostalgia, and personal meaning—not treating every card like a stock to be speculated on. Yet time and time again, mainstream platforms and companies frame stories only through the narrow lens of profit and loss. What was once about childhood wonder is now repackaged as a cautionary tale of dollars “lost”.

Yesterday, Fanatics published a post across social media from their @fanaticscollect channel describing a childhood decision as a “$3,000 mistake”. The card in question—a 1st Edition “Blaine’s Arcanine” from one of the original Pokémon sets—had been pressed into the grip tape of a skateboard when its owner was a teenager. Years later, it resurfaced, labeled in hindsight as a financial blunder. The headline focused not on creativity or nostalgia, but on what could have been if the card wasn’t all but destroyed—a valuation number on a grading scale, forever tied to money left on the table.

Calling this story a “$3,000 mistake” is pure rage bait—chasing engagement instead of honoring the real spirit of a childhood story. The hobby should be about joy and nostalgia, not reducing every card to a profit calculation.

Calling this story a “$3,000 mistake” misses the point entirely. It wasn’t a mistake—it was a memory. It was passion. It was creativity. That card didn’t just sit in a shoebox or a slabbed case gathering dust; it lived. It went out into the world, joined a kid on adventures, and became part of his identity. It represented freedom, imagination, and the magic of Pokémon—exactly what made this hobby special in the first place.

By reducing it to a lost profit calculation, we don’t just insult that story—we reinforce the toxic message that collecting is only valid if it pays. This is the same mindset that has turned the hobby into a speculative marketplace, where cards are constantly flipped, hyped, and exploited. It’s the mindset that fuels gambling-style breaks and addictive spending habits. And it’s the mindset we’re working to challenge every single day at Collectors MD.

What many people in the comments got right is that this is what collecting should be: freedom, expression, joy. One collector said, “The card went with him on adventures. True to the Pokémon story.” Another wrote, “Bro thought it’d be dope to put a card on his board. That’s priceless.” These aren’t financial takes—they’re reminders that the value of collecting is found in the stories, not the spreadsheets.

At Collectors MD, we believe moments like these are guideposts. The value of collecting isn’t measured in resale prices or market charts—it’s measured in the memories we make and the meaning we attach. Cards are supposed to remind us of who we are, where we’ve been, and what we love. And when we lose sight of that—when every card becomes an “asset” or a “missed opportunity”—we lose the very soul of the hobby.

Profit Fades. Passion Remains.

#CollectorsMD
A card skated into childhood isn’t a $3,000 mistake—it’s a $3,000 memory.

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Published September 20, 2025 | By Alyx E, Founder of Collectors MD

When tragedy strikes, the marketplace rarely pauses to reflect—it rushes to capitalize. We’ve seen it too many times. A card that sold for $20 yesterday suddenly soars to $400+ the next day, not because the ink or cardboard changed, but because the life behind the image has ended.

Recently, that’s been the case with Charlie Kirk’s lone “licensed” card. His untimely passing turned a once-overlooked collectible into a 20x inflated commodity overnight.

This cycle is nothing new. When Kobe Bryant tragically passed, his cards and sneakers spiked in value within hours of the news. The same happened after Hulk Hogan’s shocking death earlier this year, as collectors rushed to grab anything tied to his legacy. We saw it again with NBA icons like Jerry West and Bill Russell, whose passings instantly transformed once-accessible collectibles into scarce, highly priced assets. Rickey Henderson—another legend whose passing shifted grief into profit—showed yet again how quickly the market turns loss into leverage. Even Pete Rose, despite the controversy surrounding his career, became the subject of frenzied buying when he died.

Time and again, we’ve watched grief transform into a marketplace feeding frenzy, where memorabilia and artifacts shift overnight from mementos of admiration to vehicles of profiteering. And it doesn’t stop at cards—sneakers, signed items, ticket stubs, anything tied to the individual becomes fuel for speculation the moment their story comes to a tragic close.

When loss turns into listings, ‘eBay greed’ shows us just how quickly tragedy gets priced and sold.

Profiting off of tragedy and loss is the lowest form of greed. What’s most unsettling is how normalized it has become. Entire ecosystems of buyers and sellers move like vultures, circling grief as if it were just another arbitrage opportunity. And yet, it’s not so simple to assign blame. Are the sellers wrong for listing at inflated prices, or the buyers wrong for validating those prices? Both sides play a part in turning mourning into market movement.

At its core, this phenomenon reveals something bigger than supply and demand—it exposes the hollow space where intention should live. The hype doesn’t care about legacy, memory, or respect. It cares about profit. And in that vacuum, the line between celebrating someone’s life and exploiting their death becomes disturbingly thin.

As collectors, we have to ask ourselves: What’s the cost of chasing cards tied to tragedy? What are we really honoring—our love for the athlete or entertainer, or our hunger for profit? Because if it’s the latter, we’re not collecting with intention. We’re speculating on loss. And that, more than anything else, should make us pause and seriously reevaluate why we’re in this hobby in the first place—and what we truly want from it.

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When the market feeds on grief, our responsibility is to ask whether we’re honoring a life—or exploiting a loss.

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On the last episode of The Collector’s Compass, Dr. Aakar “Rick” Shah joined us to unpack the thrill of the chase—why collectors keep seeking that rush of elation over and over.

When you hit a big card, it often stops being about the card itself. Instead, the focus shifts to its value, condition, and flip potential. That moment of joy gets replaced with calculation—“what’s it worth, what grade could it pull, how fast can I move it?”

This cycle is what makes collecting so complicated today. Nostalgia and passion collide with market hype, and suddenly the “hobby” can feel more like a scoreboard.

That’s why conversations like this matter. Collectors MD is here to ask the harder questions, challenge the status quo, and remind people it’s okay to collect with intention instead of impulse.

🎙 Catch the full episode on YouTube and join us tomorrow at 12PM ET for a brand new episode of The Collector’s Compass.

#CollectorsMD | #RipResponsibly | #CollectResponsibly

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