“The Hobby” Review: A Look At Card Collecting, From Baseballs to Pokéballs

I’m not much of a collector, but I do remember having a trading card phase, specifically Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh! cards. I never played the card game or traded, I just liked having the cards. Those were fun times. I remember the cool art, the exclusive cards given out during the movies, and of course, the “e-Reader” cards that married trading cards and video games. That said, I wasn’t nearly as into it as many others were, and still are, and I’m sure many of you might be wondering how a simple piece of cardboard can mean so much to someone. Well, a new documentary might at least give you some idea, because it’s clear trading cards are bigger than ever.

The Hobby is a new documentary that delves into the deep rabbit hole of the recent trading card collecting boom. Since COVID, sales of cards have skyrocketed, celebrities have gotten in on the game, and mint cards can go for hundreds of thousands of dollars. At the same time, reports of robberies, fights, and massive buying runs all over trading cards have hit the news. It’s clear that this is about more than money, but also passion and nostalgia. Trading cards can cover anything from sports to television, celebrities to comic book characters, both the real and the fantastical, and in some cases, political (and you’d be surprised how far back those go).

Out of this frenzy, a few clear characters are followed. There are the hosts of the popular podcast Sports Card Nonsense, who discuss trading cards when they aren’t collecting them. There’s YouTuber SuperDuperDani, who chronicles her Pokémon card collecting online. Other influencers livestream their own hauls, opening boxes of cards for an audience eager to trade. There’s Josh Luber, the Chief Vision Officer of trading card company Fanatics, who hopes to change the card collecting game. The film also follows auctioneers, shop owners, convention attendees, graders, and others in this world where finding the right card can be life-changing.

As far as the documentary as a whole is concerned, I felt it could get a little slow or repetitive at times. There’s always the question of whether or not one needs to spend as much time on a subject as they do, and even at just 90 minutes, I felt like some things could’ve been cut. There’s only so much you can say about trading card fandoms after all. I also feel like more should’ve been said about the darker aspects of the fandom discussed in the beginning, such as the fights and scams resulting from the trading card boom. I get that it wasn’t the point, but I felt was too intriguing to really drop.

Really, what this documentary is about is the people, and I felt the filmmakers did a really good job in portraying them. I’m sure some might hear this story and wonder what all the fuss is about, but I rarely felt like the subjects of the film were treated as a mere spectacle. There’s a genuine love that fuels the frenzy, not just desire for money, and it’s on full display here. It won’t be too long before, when boxes of cards are opened, you’ll be rooting for the subject to find the right card they’ve been searching for. By the end of the film, I definitely had a full understanding of how both the trading card industry and collecting worked, and just how big it is.

While The Hobby is about trading cards, and a fairly recent part of them, I definitely feel like it could apply to the nature of collecting as a whole. As a gateway into card collecting for those unacquainted, I think it’s a decent documentary. For those interested in fan culture, including collecting, I would absolutely recommend this. You might also end up looking around your place a bit more carefully afterwards. You never know if you have something to trade yourself.