Brendan Coffey
5 min read
In 1994, baseball pitcher Bill Lee told filmmaker Ken Burns about his baseball card collection as part of Burns’ sprawling documentary. “I could take all my Mickey Mantle and other Yankees, Moose Skowron, and I could put them on my bike, and I could ride down the hill and make me sound like I was going faster,” Spaceman recounted. That sound it made? “There’s goes $5,200, $5,200 burning down the highway.”
These days, if publicly traded retailer GameStop has its way, the young Bill Lees of today won’t be sticking cards on their bicycle spokes; instead, they’ll be riding down to their local GameStop, getting them graded by PSA and trading them in. The retailer, better known for selling new and used video games and for meme stock celebrity during the pandemic, announced last week during its annual meeting that it is expanding its collectibles business.
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“The trading card market—whether it’s sports, Pokémon or collectibles—is aligned with our heritage. It fits our trade and model, it appeals to our core customer base and it’s deeply embedded in physical retail,” CEO Ryan Cohen said in prepared remarks at the meeting. “Unlike software it’s tactile. Unlike hardware, it has high margin potential. It’s a logical expansion.”
It’s hard to say what a greater emphasis on collectibles will look like for GameStop. Cohen didn’t take questions at the annual meeting, and the company hasn’t held calls public calls or investor presentations in 18 months, according to data compiled by S&P Global Market Intelligence.
Since last fall, GameStop has been a partner with PSA, the Steve Cohen-owned trading card grader, accepting cards at 1,360 of its 3,200 stores and shipping them to PSA for scoring. A recent visit to a typical GameStop—located in a strip mall storefront in Topsham, Maine—found plenty of collectibles that probably have a future in landfills instead of auction houses: mass produced Funko Pop! figurines, other movie and athlete action figures and a selection of t-shirts. There were no card-grading services or trading cards displayed.
Still, one GameStop executive who requested anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly on collectibles said stores will start adding dedicated space for sports cards, trading card games and trade-and-play events for collectors to gather. The company probably will do more “Power Packs” as well, which feature a surprise mix of cards, including one PSA-graded piece scoring 8 or higher. The company debuted them in April and they sold out opening weekend. GameStop is also adding PSA services to another 280 stores after taking its one millionth PSA grade order in early May, according to the executive. Collectibles, it seems, are the one bright spot in GameStop’s business.
