2025 Hobby Predictions

After I made a surprise appearance among industry leaders in Cllct’s Year In Collectibles: 2024’s Top Trends article series, I figured I’d throw out some predictions for what we might see in 2025.

I'm breaking this down in two sections: YouTube and other social media, and Industry

YouTube / Hobby Social Media

I’ve noticed a proliferation of hobby newsletters this year. (This one you’re reading right now, of course, is the best.) I think we’ll see more and more newsletters, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see some newsletter consolidation. It’s a fast-growing medium, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see a newsletter network.

Speaking of networks, a sports card YouTube network feels like it’s on the horizon. Bench Clear Media was kind of a pioneer here in a way, with many different shows on the same channel. Now we have 4 Collectors who are doing a series of talks and interviews. Imagine many channels under one umbrella, though, and they all have different focuses and promote each other. Geoff Wilson kind of does this, but imagine a network with one channel focused on modern cards, one on vintage, one on pre-war, and one on non-sports.

On that note, how far are we from seeing a hobby ESPN show? I don’t think it’s far. Someone recently mentioned this in a comment on my YouTube channel:

I also think at least one major “flipper” YouTuber (25k-75k subscribers) will disappear from the limelight in 2025. I’ve already seen several of them talk about how much harder it is to make money in 2024 than it was in years past.

We will not see the great migration from Twitter/X to Bluesky, but straight up collectors seem to be really enjoying the latter since they left the former late in 2024.

Mantel will become more prevalent in the hobby, now that they have an app and are introducing groups soon. (I hope to own one of those beta groups, so stay tuned!)

Industry

PSA will continue to Amazonify themselves. While I’m not sure that their goal at this point is to gain more market share in grading cards, they can definitely grow their business through their collaborations with eBay, and likely introduce more partnerships elsewhere. The end goal is for you, the card collector/seller, to more easily buy cards, grade them, and sell them, from start to beginning. And for PSA to make more revenue from the entire process.

I expect Collectors (PSA & SGC’s parent company) to start making changes at SGC. They’ll market the changes that are positive to collectors, such as an integrated pop report and perhaps integrated registry. (A guy can dream.)

HGA hasn’t taken new orders since July, and CGA announced on their Facebook (posts since deleted, and now they’re projecting success) that they were close to closing down. I think more smaller graders are going out of business. There are a lot more graders out there than you or I realize.

While some may shut down, will this be the year PSA moves into AI/ML in some meaningful capacity? I say no, but there are some neat things that TAG does that people would love to see at PSA.

Or will Beckett parent company’s recently-announced $250 million investment mean anything? They need a big swing. Maybe it’s introducing TAG-like functionality.

We’ll see more consolidation of companies, like Collectors buying SGC in 2024.

Gambling will continue to be a big problem in the hobby. Will we see increased calls for regulation? I don’t think so. You’d need bigger voices in the hobby calling for it, and they’re all profiting too much from it.

Fanatics will continue to increase production & prices, and because of the aforementioned gambling problem, people will continue to buy it.

At some point, though, there will be a breaking point (pun unintended), where breaks aren’t selling as quickly or as profitably as they do now. Fanatics / Topps keep testing where that line is, and eventually they’ll find it.

If you think live-breaking platforms aren’t tough enough on shady sellers now, just wait until breaks aren’t filling.

New Year’s Resolution? Upgrade Your Supplies!

COMC 40% Off New Year’s Sale!

I’m doing 40% off sale on my COMC store just for for New Year’s, starting today and ending Wednesday!

I have a pretty wide variety of cards on there, and at the time I priced them, almost all of them were priced at the lowest listed.

Use the filters or search on the left to find what you want.

Rickey Henderson’s Market

Last week I wrote about the market of recently-deceased players like Rickey Henderson. One of my readers, Brent, is a massive Rickey supercollector, and had some great context to add:

🗣️ YouTube Comments Of The Week

From my Sunday video where I talked about 1990 Topps design making its return in 2025:

Speaking of Topps photoshopping things on cards, a commenter pointed me to his Instagram for this great example:

Why’d they airbrush the shirt design out of one but not the other?

From the Sealed Wax Room (more on that video in weekly highlights):

🎬 Upcoming Videos

• A visit to Don’s Sports Card Center in Portland, ME — and my annual Christmas box rip!

• Another Attic Find Friday — I have a bunch of these again

• #59-55 of my ACE 100 list

• A subscriber’s killer music card collection

📩 Upcoming Newsletters

I hope you don’t mind a few newsletters a week until I catch up.

• Topps and the case of the worsening collation

• An absolutely bonkers vintage and pre-war collection my friend Oliver saw parts of on Saturday and is trying to help the person sell

• Swapped jersey patches

• A Paul Skenes card that surprised me

• 2024 Junk Wax Hero year in review

🎬 Channel Highlights From the Past Week

The highlights need to start with the sealed wax room:

I posted that on Friday, and when I spoke up Saturday morning I discovered that I got my most views in a day ever on Friday, with more than 14,000.

Without a new video on Saturday, I still had more than 11,000 views. That was my 4th-most ever in a day.

I also added about 150 new subscribers in those two days.

As of midday Sunday, I’m at 115,000 views for December, which crushes the record of 106,000 I set the month before.

I should hit 2 million views in the next week or two.

I also finally did this video:

No response from PSA yet, and the cert is still active. I’ll follow up on Twitter later in the week when I’m sure they’re back to work after the holidays.

By the way, should I still celebrate every 1,000 subscribers at this point?

Yes.

🎁 My Pickup Of The Week

Ignore the terrible resolution and admire this baby:

I’ll show the grade in a weekly pickups video after I receive it. I also snagged a monster 1987 Topps autograph.

👻 Brief Horror Movie Review of the Week

I went to see Nosferatu on Saturday and enjoyed it. More terror than horror.

It’s by the same guy who did The Witch, which I hated, and The Lighthouse, which I couldn’t get through. If I hadn’t liked this one, I would’ve given up on his movies.

I also watched 28 Days Later, which, despite its poor audio and video, is amazing, and a must-watch for zombie fans.

Next up: 28 Weeks Later (as soon as I watch Squid Game season 2)

🔗 Links:

Zion Williamson Rookie PSA 10s Selling for only $0.99

Man Didn’t Understand Concept of Baseball Card Collecting, Just Kept Buying Same Card

And the three links I promised from Sunday’s CtB episode:

And PSA’s really good response to Darren Rovell’s article about why there are so few PSA 10 Rickey Henderson rookie cards: