5 Reasons Why Cards Will Explode in 2026!
We've had a crazy 5 years since the card boom during the pandemic, but 2026 is about to bring even more happiness back to the hobby!
Each Happy Hobby Sports Card Newsletter For Collectors has a handful of great sports card subjects, helping sports card collectors working with limited budgets!
This Week’s Newsletter Highlights!
⚾🏈🏀 5 REASONS WHY CARDS WILL EXPLODE IN 2026
⚾ BASEBALL CARD TRIVIA!
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⚾🏈🏀 5 REASONS WHY CARDS WILL EXPLODE AGAIN IN 2026
Whether you lived through the ‘50s, the junk wax era or the pandemic, you’ve experienced a card-collecting boom at least once in your life. While we’re not predicting a spike as dramatic as those in 2026, we do have a handful of reasons why we think things are going to get even better for collectors next year.
1. Fanatics Unifies the 3 Main Sports Card Licenses
Not since Topps ran the show from 1956 through 1980 have we seen a card manufacturer singularly hold the card licenses of three major sports, like we will in 2026, once Fanatics takes the crown. The collectables environment is a completely different one than during Topps’ 25-year solo run.
Remember, too, that Topps did lose the NFL license for a while in the ‘70s to Fleer, and Topps didn’t make basketball cards for much of that quarter-century.
The knee-jerk reaction to Fanatics owning all three licenses is collectors should be worried because competition breeds innovation. But let’s also remember that Fanatics owns Topps now, and Fanatics invested heavily into cards. They can’t afford for new collectors to get bored and leave.
It’s true, they’ll always have the true collector, and now they’ve even gained would-be gamblers with breaking becoming their own niche. But the key for Fanatics is they need people to care about base cards again somehow. That could mean trying to get people to build sets again, or it might mean dropping production runs, but they have teams of people wondering how to improve the hobby.
By next year, they’ll be able to implement all of their ideas to help this hobby get happier!
2. Topps Celebrates Their 75th Anniversary!
The 2026 Topps Series 1 set will be the 75th set of flagship baseball cards, and we expect some serious awesomeness. The rookie class should be pretty good, including players like Roman Anthony, Marcelo Mayer, Bubba Chandler, Jac Caglianone, Kyle Teel, and many others.
The crossover possibilities with the NBA and NFL make this Topps Baseball set exciting, as well. My hopes is that Fanatics creates a cross-sport chase insert, like a Downtown or Home Field Advantage, where you can pull a rookie HFA of Cooper Flagg or Arch Manning in a baseball box! Or pulling a Roman Anthony HFA in a basketball box!
3. We’ll Finally Be Able To Afford Chromium Boxes of NBA and NFL
Prizm is out of my league. Sure, I’ll buy a blaster or two when I can find them, but I can’t even sniff a hobby box – mostly because I have a mortgage to pay. But we’ll now be able to buy Topps Chrome Basketball and Football, with chances at autographs, with refractors, with Xfractors, and all the other awesomeness that comes in Topps Chrome Baseball!
4. Young Superstars… Everywhere
I am going to list a group of young superstars in a second, and I want you to think of another time period that held this much promise. I understand that not every one of these players will in fact become superstars, but the potential is there.
MLB: Paul Skenes, Jackson Chourio, Bobby Witt Jr., Elly de La Cruz, Jackson Merrill
NBA: Victor Wembanyama, Cooper Flagg
NFL: Jayden Daniels, Caleb Williams, C.J. Stroud, Justin Jefferson, Ja’Marr Chase
NHL: Connor Bedard, Macklin Celebrini, Matvei Michkov
WNBA: Caitlin Clark, Paige Bueckers, JuJu Watkins
When have we seen this amount of young superstars making every sport hobby friendly?
5. True Collectors Stuck Around Through the Worst – and Will Now Be Rewarded!
Think of how much garbage true sports card collectors (and I’m including flippers and comeback collectors) went through over the past 5 years. From Wander Franco going from Hobby Hero to Hobby Zero, to Zion Williamson turning into a great 30-game-per-season player, to PSA shutting down for a year, to dozens and dozens of scams and controversies, to Backyard Breaks, to everything else – we stuck around. We bought cards – new and old – and we continued to adapt to whatever happened around us.
We’ve learned from our errors. We’re smarter cardboard consumers than ever before.
Finally, things should settle down with all three sports under one umbrella, and we can start moving past this 3-year purgatory we’ve been in since Fanatics announced they’d have all three licenses by 2026.
Bonus Takes: Grading has leveled out. We don’t have 10 grading companies fighting for the fastest turnaround times, consistency be damned… The WNBA is a rocketship – and Caitlin Clark is the worst she’ll be in her career right now. She’ll only get better, and the league is grabbing onto her coattails… The 2026 FIFA World Cup is hosted by 16 North American cities – the home of card collecting. Panini still holds FIFA World Cup card rights, and they’re going to lean into this like it’s the last helicopter out of Saigon.
Let us know what you think is going to happen in 2026 in the comments below! Will the sports card world improve, stay the same or get worse!?!
⚾ BASEBALL CARD TRIVIA!
Send me the answer to this question – you could win this free card from me: 1986 Topps Pete Rose Record Breaker #206!
Topps Gold parallels started being numbered to the year they were manufactured – in what year?
Email your answer to gonoscards@gmail.com and you can win this 1986 Topps Pete Rose Record Breaker #206 Card! Rather than take the first person who answers it right, I’m going to do a random drawing of all the people who answer this question before midnight, Friday, June 27. The winner will be announced in the July 3 newsletter.
From June 12 newsletter: Which card did broadcaster Bob Costas famously say he kept in his wallet for years? Prize: 1981 Donruss Willie Stargell #132 card. Answer this question before midnight, Friday, June 20. The winner will be announced in the June 26 newsletter.
From June 5 newsletter: I am a right-handed pitcher who joined the majors in 1967, pitching for 19 years on four different clubs, making two All-Star teams. I did NOT make the Hall of Fame, and I led the league in losses twice. Yet, my rookie card is considered one of the most expensive cards of the ‘60s. Who am I? Answer: Jerry Koosman. Prize: 1992 Donruss Nolan Ryan #707 card. Winner: Matthew Dobbs! Congrats, Matthew — you were the ONLY one to get this answer correct!
Coming Next Week!
⚾ LOOKING BACK AT 1962 TOPPS STAMPS! MAIL DAY!
⚾ BASEBALL CARD TRIVIA!
⚾🏈🏀 CARDS THAT MAKE US HAPPY!
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Indy 500 card -- I need that!!!
Yeah, I get your concern, and Series 2, yoiks. Expensive commons. Hopefully, things recalibrate, that's my hope, once they get everything in house.
I love your optimism David and I hope it is as you predict. My fear is that Fanatics will push the envelope a little bit too far: they will over produce and overprice just because they can. We have already seen how Series 2 baseball looks this year: almost $200 for a jumbo box that doesn't deliver the best results. Granted part of that is a weak rookie class that Fanatics doesn't control, but they do control the print runs and therefore the odds of a numbered card or two in a box. I am also hoping that with inflation and price increases on everything, maybe some of the flippers and breakers will bow out and prices will drop to more normal levels keeping the true collectors happy.
I also hope that someone from Topps is reading your opinions and they give us some of the crossover cards you mentions. How about and Indy 500 card with Haliburton and Clark in an Indy car at the track? So many options to make some cool inserts.