Inside the resurgence of football trading cards

Card collecting began in the 1800s, when stiffener cards featuring baseball players, actors, military leaders, and animals were placed inside cigarette packs. In 1887, John Baines, a toy shop owner from Bradford, invented Britain's first football cards, and sold them from cart pulled by a horse with a monkey on it's back, calling himself the 'Football Card King'.

They went mainstream in the 1950s when Topps entered the market, pairing annual sets with chewing gum, and collecting football cards soon became a childhood rite of passage. Topps were the dominant players until 2009, when European sticker experts Panini shifted to aggressively focusing on trading cards, acquiring American brand Donruss and securing major sports card licensing rights to do so.

It was Panini, not Topps, who were directly responsible for the football card boom that initially took place during the Covid-19 pandemic and the lockdowns in early 2020, as they aimed to Americanise the space. They capitalised on U.S. collectors looking for new avenues by giving football cards the special treatment that had typically been reserved for the NBA and NFL, releasing sets like Prizm, Select, and Donruss Kaboom with short-printed parallels.

This ultimately led to the growth of a card-grading and box-breaking culture based around heavy speculation. Instead of collecting favourite teams, investors turned their attention to buying rookie cards in the hope that their value would spike during the biggest matches and tournaments.

Collectors also realised that Panini had been creating limited edition sets for decades prior, and began hunting for the rarest cards in the best condition to get them graded. It's a potentially lucrative business; any card graded a '10 Gem Mint' by leading authenticator PSA can command a 3x to 5x premium on the raw version. Get a numbered or autographed rookie card at PSA 10, and you've essentially hit the jackpot.

The business landscape of football cards changed dramatically when sports retail and merchandising giant Fanatics acquired Topps trading cards for $500m in January 2022. Prior to the deal, Topps held rights in the UEFA Champions League and Bundesliga through its offices in the United Kingdom and Germany.

Fanatics integrated Topps into its e-commerce and retail ecosystem, with company CEO Michael Rubin explaining at the time that their goal was to make trading cards "a significant pillar of our long-term plans to become the leading digital sports platform". Suddenly, premium football cards weren't just sold in niche hobby shops; they were marketed directly to millions of football fans worldwide through Fanatics’ existing club merchandise sites.

Much like Panini had done, they then applied the North American "chase card" model to football, cutting back on basic paper stickers to focus on high-tech chrome cards, multi-tiered refractors, scarce parallels, and authentic on-card autographs. Fanatics' innovative product design helped transform football cards from a novelty to a tangible asset class, with the introduction of game-used memorabilia and rookie debut patches on 1-of-1 cards creating greater demand for 'holy grail' items worth thousands in the resale market.

Collecting football cards is trendy again because there are now a seemingly endless number of content creators promoting the hobby on social media. A new generation of youngsters are being drawn towards interactive events and card shows, where they can not only bolster their collections, but also socialise with like-minded individuals.

"It gets people together. These card shows are really good days out. People meeting each other that have met online, they have lunch, or go for a couple of beers if it's an older audience," Matthew Blazey, the man behind the Blazey Collects YouTube channel that boasts 78.6k subscribers, told GOAL. "You've gone from having just a London card show to something like 60 shows across the year. There is a huge social element to it. The community building is worth way more than making any money."

YouTubers like Blazey and GamerBoyWii (GBW) can pull in hundreds of thousands of views, while Sidemen members such as Simon Minter, Joshua Bradley and Ethan Payne - all of whom boast well over a million subscribers - also open football card boxes on their respective channels. A number of professional footballers have jumped on the bandwagon, too.

Tosin Adarabioyo, who joined Tottenham in the summer transfer window, showcases his rare personal card pulls via his dedicated Instagram account, as does Crystal Palace midfielder Adam Wharton. Adarabioyo's new team-mate at Spurs, Dominic Solanke, is also an avid collector, and in November, he joined Adaradioyo at the launch of Fanatics' flagship store on Regent Street in London.

Ipswich Town defender Leif Davis is the face of 'Collective Collects', a card-breaking platform he founded alongside Twitch streamer Danny Campion and friend Josh Kelly. "We're not really in it for the money, we're in it to build something cool and it's something we're passionate about," Campion told the BBC last year. "It's only going to get bigger as well as the hobby grows throughout the UK and then intertwines with the U.S. market. It's really exciting and really cool."

There are plenty who are in it for financial gain, though. A former personal trainer from Suffolk named Aaron Pearce gave up his day job to focus on football card reselling, creating the account Baller Breaks UK, and has made £2.4m in revenue over the last year, per PA Media.

Pearce does not simply sell individual cards, but rather "spots" to collectors and viewers on video-shopping marketplaces like Whatnot and ebay Live, usually divided by football clubs. He then "breaks" the cards open live on camera, and the person who brought the Manchester United spot, for example, will get every single card from the club that is pulled. Collectors have the chance to land high-end, valuable cards for a fraction of their original cost in this lottery-like format, which can attract up to several thousands of total unique visitors over the course of an hour-long live stream.

Blazey feels that live box breaking and pre-recorded videos can co-exist in the same space, but it's not a straightforward balancing act.

"There's room to be a mix. I've always prioritised the recorded stuff because my channel is more pivoted to those who would like to open a product but don't know which ones to open," he said. "The benefit of pre-recorded stuff is it's neutral. Everything on those live streams is trying to convince you to jump in and buy something. Pre-recorded stuff has a safe marketplace where you're not being pressurised to do something. That's why you have to be very careful as a content creator to enter into the live stuff, because your audience will perceive it as you're going from a trusted channel to a channel that's going out there to make money.

"I think breaking is good in general for the market, though. One, it's entertaining, and two, some of these boxes are like £300-400, so you cant go out necessarily and buy one, but you can enter a break and have a chance of getting something. However, the breaking space is a little bit like the wild west at the moment. You need breaking and you need pre-recorded content, but I wouldn't be surprised if there will soon be more regulation around breaking. Whatnot have launched a load more controls for it recently and I know that Fanatics Live are really tough on the regulatory pieces, so the companies are getting there themselves anyway."

Blazey added on what has driven the growth of his channel: "Consistency is key, showing up and doing it regularly. Building a community; I've got a really loyal fanbase that will come on a watch every video, and they'll comment on every video. A lot of videos get 50-plus comments quickly, which is a lot on these videos. I don't swear, it's all very PG and kid-friendly, so therefore parents are happy for their children to watch the content. I think it's all about good values, if you go on there and you're positive and you're welcoming of the audience no matter who you are you can get involved.

"There's a lot of people just out there to make money, and as a result they don't build the community that's needed to take it forward. People buy into the enthusiasm and the values when they're watching content, and as a result they buy into the creator. People come to watch you, not necessarily the product being opened."

Blazey also went into detailabout what has driven the resurgence of football cards, having initially started his channel back in 2021.

"The Euro 2020 stickers went crazy, everyone was collecting them, especially my generation, you had social distancing and could get everyone back together. I think that drew a lot of traffic to YouTube, which held a lot of the hobby-based product stuff that people just weren't aware of," he said. "All of a sudden you had this goldmine of, 'Wow its not just football stickers; you've got cards with bits of kit on, signed cards, everything'. So for me, Euro 2020 was when I really got into it. That was the beginning for me, I saw a lot on YouTube, started to open cards and film myself, and it just snowballed from there.

"Especially over the last three years, football cards have just exploded. I think it's only going to keep growing now, especially in the UK now that Topps hold the Premier League license because they're doing all sorts of crazy things with it now. And you're starting to get the crossover, JJ Gabriel was down at launch day for Fanatics this summer; Tosin, Solanke have ventured into it, Adam Wharton loves it too. We're in a perfect storm. I think it's capturing those that used to open cards at school, like Pokemon, Match Attax, and that nostalgic drive of doing it now you have adult money and all these bigger cards that you can now chase. I think it's drawing more and more people back in.

"Newer collectors have seen they can make a lot of money very quickly, setting up the right way, so investment is another big piece. Social media has caused a combination of those two to just explode. TikTok YouTube, Instagram, Whatnot, Fanatics and eBay Live, It is literally everywhere, which is just causing the net to broaden and broaden."

Blazey added on how the hobby has become Americanised: "When you look at the U.S. market in particular, there are so many NFL players that grew up collecting NFL cards, and now they're adults and their own cards are out there they're into going and sourcing them. I think if that continues to transfer across the UK market with football, it will be a huge driver for growth.

"I think when a lot of kids were at school, collecting World Cup stickers was a massive thing. America doesn't really have that for stickers. However for them, right back to the '20s, like NFL cards, MLB, ice hockey, its always been ingrained in their culture. It's grown over there for 100 years, whereas in the UK, the whole football card niche has only really started growing since 2014, and it was very small, but it's starting to grow at some pace now. Over here it's always been Match Attax and very child-focused, whereas now it's drawing more adults into the space with the more premium collections, with the chase cards and the big autographs."

The top 10 most expensive football cards of all time were all sold within the last five years, which underlines how fashionable the hobby has become. In September, 2021, a PSA 9 Topps Chrome Champions League Red Refractor card featuring a rookie Erling Haaland in a 2019-20 Borussia Dortmund kit fetched $227,000 at Goldin Auctions, while Cristiano Ronaldo's 2002-03 Sporting CP Panini Mega Cracks Rookie card sold for $288,000.

A PSA 10 version of that Ronaldo card went for $1.35m during the 2025-26 season, and the same amount was generated for his 2018 Panini Kaboom! Green 1/1. But the Portuguese superstar still sits behind his eternal nemesis, Lionel Messi. The Argentina legend's 2004-05 Panini Mega Cracks Rookie card featuring him as a long haired teenager fresh out of Barcelona's famed La Masia academy was bought for a staggering $1.5m through Fanatics Collect's fledgling private sales network last September.

Brazil icon Pele has two rookie cards inside the top 10, while France superstar Kylian Mbappe's PSA 10 2018 Panini Prizm World Cup Gold Prizm sits in 10th after selling for $216,000 in June 2022. These cards boast eternal appeal because they capture a specific moment, with collectors buying into their era-defining stories to quite literally claim a piece of history.

There will certainly always be a demand for Panini Prizm World Cup cards, and more specifically the set that Blazey believes is "arguably the best there is". He says: "World Cup Prizm 2014 is the set that started it all. If you're collecting old-school cards to hold, World Cup Prizm 2014 would always be the set, fantastic product."

Over the last four years, Fanatics have systematically dismantled Panini's stranglehold on the football card market. The first significant move came when they struck an exclusive deal with UEFA for Topps to produce the official cards and stickers for the 2024 and 2028 European Championships.

Panini sticker albums had been a staple of the Euros since 1977, and losing the core of their demographic was a bitter blow. Fanatics then went after the official licence for the English Premier League - the most profitable division in club football - which Panini had held since 2019.

Ahead of the 2025-26 season, Fanatics took over the global Premier League rights, branding the official collections under Topps. This forced Panini to pivot towards the English Football League (EFL) to maintain their presence in the country's domestic football landscape.

The death of the duopoly was all but confirmed in May, as FIFA announced the end of its 60-year partnership with Panini. Starting from 2031, Topps will manufacture all World Cup trading cards, stickers, and digital collectibles, and Fanatics will give away more than $150m in collectibles to kids across the duration of the contract.

"With Fanatics, we see that they are driving massive innovation in sports collectibles that does provide fans with a new, meaningful way to engage with their favourite teams and with their favourite players," FIFA president Gianni Infantino said to The Athletic. "So, from FIFA’s point of view, we can globalize that fan engagement precisely thanks to our global tournament portfolio. And this provides another important commercial revenue stream that we channel back, as always, into the game, into football."

Fanatics CEO Rubin added on the agreement: "Our collectibles business this year is probably 85 percent in the U.S. So as we think about how to expand globally, which is how we turn this into a much bigger business, there’s nothing more important than FIFA. Our big growth initiative and partnering with FIFA to do the World Cup, there’s no bigger event in the world than the World Cup every four years. We think long term, global football should be our biggest business. Our job is to make sure that we keep raising the bar and innovating in a way that nobody else can do."

All is not lost for Panini just yet, though, particularly because they still hold one very attractive license. "The Panini English Football League stuff has a huge market, especially for big clubs that haven't been in the Premier League for a long time and have not had football cards," says Blazey. "For Millwall fans it was huge; Millwall cards were going for crazy money, so were QPR, more than a lot of Premier League cards. Panini still has a very strong license in the EFL that will benefit them in the long run. They did really well to get it, but that's their landmark product now. That product will always do well on YouTube, but Topps has a much bigger audience on YouTube now."

Panini still has a die-hard fanbase that has little time for their main competitors, too, as Blazey adds: "The older audience that has been around for a long time really doesn't like this era, which they call 'junk wax'. They perceive that what was once quite a niche category has now become really mainstream."

The 2026 World Cup in Canada, Mexico and the U.S. fuelled another incredible surge in demand for football trading cards. Because North America is traditionally the largest and most developed market for sports card collecting, hosting the World Cup locally created a gateway for millions of domestic fans to enter the 'soccer' hobby.

Panini's 2026 World Cup Prizm set was the most widely distributed football card product in history, with ultra-rare cards, like 1-of-1 Black Prisms, Nebula Prisms, and Color Blast inserts, included to help attract a massive new audience. There were also so many compelling narratives for people to buy into at the tournament, including Messi's 'Last Dance' with Argentina, Ronaldo's expected final bow for Portugal, and Lamine Yamal's first appearance on the global stage - which ended in glory with Spain.

After the World Cup, Topps was ready to capitalise on the hype with the release of its Flagship 2026-27 Premier League collection. After trimming down the base set from 450 cards to a leaner 300, completing a full binder is now easier than ever, and collectors can concentrate more on the value of chase cards.

Topps has also tapped into millennial nostalgia by bringing back Merlin styling in a separate 200-card set. Honouring the classic 1990s sticker brand, the Merlin collection blends modern players with retro, wizardry-inspired, and classical art themes that hold irresistible emotional weight for long-time enthusiasts of the hobby.

Another spike will come when the 2026-27 Topps Chrome UEFA Champions League set drops later in the season. This week, Fanatics Collectibles and UC3 (representing UEFA and top European club teams) announced a six-year partnership extension running from 2027 through 2033, with the latest Champions League collection set to include 1-of-1 debut patch cards.

Fanatics will no doubt already be preparing for the 2028 Euros in Great Britain and Ireland, and of course, there is now the 2034 World Cup to look forward to in Saudi Arabia. "That World Cup with Fanatics is going to be wild because they will have some serious plans," says Blazey. "A good barometer for where that will get to is Euro 2028; it's a home tournament, Topps have the Premier League licence, the Euros licence; they've been pushing Premier League hard, so it will be really interesting to see what they do with the Euros. Everyone keeps talking about a drop because the market has been growing so quickly, but I think this continues to grow regardless."

Indeed, the global sports trading card market is currently valued at a staggering $14.85 billion, with football commanding the largest single share of the sports segment at 35.6%. An estimated 45% of new hobbyists are specialising in football, and over 500 million cards are now sold annually in the space, with 12 million submitted to professional grading agencies.

The most sought-after football cards fall into the same bracket as fine wine, watches, and cryptocurrency. They are time capsules that preserve an unrepeatable vintage of human excellence in cardboard and ink.

Packing a legendary 1-of-1 player satisfies both the sentimental heart of the die-hard fan and the clinical logic of the modern investor, and the hobby will only keep developing in a digital age without any geographical barriers. The bottom line is: those who love the beautiful game will always yearn for a way to own, protect, and pass down a piece of that magic.