Pointing to one of many, many shelves filled with sports card boxes in his shop, Jeff Finnigan lists off the prices of a few boxes for sale.

“On the shelf up there is Impeccable basketball, $2,000 a pack. And football is $4,000 a pack of 10 cards,” Finnigan said.

That's right: Thousands of dollars for a pack of sports cards.

It's considered one of America’s great pastimes — collecting and trading cards was the stuff some kids were made of. Those kids have since become adults and can keep their hobby alive, while also checking out Finnigan’s gold mine of sports memorabilia.

Sports card trading is now estimated to be a multi-billion-dollar industry, and it continues to grow.

But why has the market exploded?

“This has been going on for a long time. We’ve been on a trajectory for a long time,” Finnigan said. “Here’s a $3 million card. This wasn’t 12 months ago. This was about five years ago."

Finnigan says there’s a common belief that the boredom many faced during the COVID-19 pandemic caused this growth, but he explains companies have become smarter about how to distribute their products and anticipate releases.

“The use of social media, the use of online auctioneering and online stores, real online data on prices. We used to use catalogs and you would wait a month to figure out how much a card would sell for,” Finnigan explains. “Now, at any given day or any given time, you can see multiple sales of the item you have.”

Online sales have been a major part of the recent boom. Sites like eBay have become hubs for cards to to be traded around the world.

“Sort it out, scan it, list it, ship it. That’s the whole process,” said Dylan Dobert, who runs online sales.

Anthony Bloomfield and Scott Nevins frequent the shop daily. They’re thrilled card trading has taken off.

“We’ve been doing this since we were kids, and to see the excitement it’s getting and the spotlight is super exciting because our collections throughout the years have increased, too,” Bloomfield said.

It’s through repeated visits from customers like Nevins and Bloomfield, among others, that have kept Finnigan going. He’s owned this shop for over 20 years. He says he could never imagine letting it go.

“It’s why I have a store. If I didn’t enjoy meeting collectors, I would just sit in a room and run an online business, but that’s not why I’m here,” Finnigan said. “I love to promote collecting. I’ve collected for 44 years. It’s the biggest reward from my business.”

Finnigan urges new card collectors to have patience with the hobby and the trends, and above all, educate yourself before you spend thousands.

“My goal is to cultivate a new customer, cultivate a new collector. Give them all the information that they need to know so they can be successful and happy with their purchase, and then they will come back,” Finnigan said.