- Pittsburgh Steelers Linebacker Cassius Marsh is opening up his own store for trading cards.
- The venture is fueled by the athlete's card passion and a general boom in the trading card market.
- Cards saw explosive growth on resale platforms like eBay, Mercari, and StockX in 2020.
- Visit the Business section of Insider for more stories.
At 6'4 and 254 pounds, Cassius Marsh, the Pittsburgh Steelers outside linebacker, isn't your typical nerd. But looks can be deceiving — the NFL athlete also happens to be a mega-fan of the collectible card game Magic: The Gathering. His own personal collection of cards is worth about $250,000, he says.
"Obviously it's a little bit more nerdy," Marsh told Insider while discussing the world of trading cards. "But it's dope."
The NFL athlete isn't shy about his unusual passions. His Instagram, which is plastered with images of sports and game cards, describes Marsh as a "Foil King," referring to the foil-like texture that distinguishes certain trading cards.
As the sports and game card market soars, Marsh is taking his passion to the next level and opening up Cash Cards Unlimited, a new trading card store located in Westlake Village, California. Set to open Friday, the store is designed to be a center for buying and selling cards across categories including Magic: The Gathering, Pokémon, and professional sports trading cards. Decked out with high-end card displays, animated character wall murals, and television screens, the store will have a sizable online presence as well and will rely on exclusive unboxing and live-streamed content from Marsh's personal Instagram account to garner public interest.
For Marsh, the store is more than a place to house his deep passion for trading cards. It's also an investment in his future post-football. Marsh plans to play in the upcoming football season, so his long-time friend and business manager Nick Nugwynne will keep the store running while he's on the field.
"I'm starting this as something for me to roll into once I am done playing," Marsh said. "A lot of guys wait until they're done playing to do something like this and I just didn't want to be one of them. I wanted to be prepared and obviously, opportunity struck at the right time. So I'm very blessed in that way."
The business of cards
While Marsh's business plan stems from his long-held passion, trading cards is a booming business that he's jumping into at just the right time.
Across the board, card sales exploded in 2020. eBay sold more than four million more sports, collectible card games, and non-sport trading cards in 2020 than in 2019, marking a 142% surge in domestic sales in the category. Mercari, another e-commerce marketplace, saw a 405% year-over-year increase in January in orders for trading cards across sports and game categories, the company confirmed to Insider. Pokémon cards, specifically, saw a 943% increase in January compared to the same month last year. Sales for trading cards were up 4,000% in 2020 on StockX, a resale platform mainly for sneakers and streetwear.
Like sneakers, trading cards obtain their value in scarcity. People who mange to obtain certain rare cards can usually resell them for a sizable profit on the resale market. Beyond their financial values, cards and sneakers also possess communities of interest that celebrate and cherish the products as collectibles.
"It's a very interesting dynamic," Christopher Hardy, Mercari's vice president of finance and an avid card collector, told Insider. "You have near Wall Street-type analysis of pricing and cards and then you have on the other spectrum, a family hobby kind of a past-time where it's less about the money and the investment."
Whether hobby or business-driven, the 2020 surge in trading cards coupled with lower than usual rent costs spurred Marsh to make his move.
"It all just kinda came together," he said. "I saw it early on and was like, 'This is just the time to do it.'"
How the store will work
Trading cards are often difficult to buy at retail, given how much certain products tend to fetch on the resale market. Many card resellers even use "bots," or software scripts that expedite the checkout process for a purchase online, to nab hyped cards that are released in limited quantities.
When it comes to sourcing inventory for his store, Marsh is diversifying his channels. The store will keep up relationships with card distributors, buy certain cards directly at retail, and work with people who are looking to sell or consign their collections and merchandise in the store.
"Probably the number one challenge is just getting product because everything's so hot right now," Marsh said. "Everybody is so into trading cards that the problem is not selling the stuff, the problem is getting the stuff."
Depending on the card, prices at Cash Cards Unlimited will range between $20 for a basic cards and $15,000 for rarer high-end cards.
For Marsh, the business opportunity is important. But the impact he's making in the booming trading card world is what he's most excited about. The athlete noted how parents have reached out to thank him for being a relatable figure in a world that has traditionally been labelled as nerdy or uncool.
"It's a pleasure for me to help any type of people out there who feel like what they're doing is not cool," Marsh said. "Because it definitely is. I love it. And I think a lot of other people are starting to see the coolness factor behind it as well."