Target Stores Suspend Sport Card Sales Over Safety Concerns

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Over the last few months, I've been tracking the craziness in the sports card world. I've made a lot of posts following this explosion in the hobby, including massive sales and crazy stories.

I have a lot of experience with the sports card world, and not just collecting as a hobby when I was a kid, the actual business side of sports cards. I started collecting cards when I was really little, but by high school was normally buying dealer tables at sports cards shows to sell and trade cards. I was able to make a little bit of money, have a lot of fun, and learn a lot of lessons.

I drifted out of collecting when my kids were young. At least out of collecting sports cards. I still had my comic books, but I really trimmed down what I was collecting. Now that my kids are older, and I don't have to worry about them getting into a much stuff around the house, I'm safe to start piling up card collections again.

But as I started to get back into sports cards, I realized it was a totally different industry than when I fell out of it. In today's world single packs can cost as much as $7,000, and that only comes with 10 cards. Some packs can get even more expensive.

This new value is being driven by the single card sales we refenced before at the start of this conversation. A Tom Brady card selling for a quarter of a million dollars, Zion Williamson rookies selling for over $10,000 easily. Mike Trout cards becoming untouchable to average Americans. These type of sales have sent the sports card world into crazy town.

Its not just the cost of some of these packs, its how rare they are to find. Even the cheapest packs in the hobby, the ones you find at retail stores like Target and Walmart, are nowhere to be found. With people even camping out in stores waiting for new stock to arrive. Then when the new cards did get put out, fights started to break out. This led to stores like Target moving their trading cards behind the service desk, and limiting the amounts single customers could buy per transaction.

Then last week, things got even scarier, when a man pulled a gun on someone at a Target over sports cards. The incident happened in Wisconsin, where four men ended up being arrested over the fight, which centered around sports cards.

Now Target has made the decision to suspend all trading card sales as of this week. The report was confirmed by Bleeding Cool News, and reported by The Verge. In addition, Bleeding Cool reports that WalMart will also be suspending trading card sales.

This has to be the craziest time in sports card collecting history.