Collecting sport cards is a 150+ years old industry. Actually, it is older than nowadays banking system. The oldest known cards from the 1860s. The most expensive card sold for $12.6 million in August 2022. The industry total value was $7.9 billion in 2021.
The most expensive sport card
I knew about this industry for a long while, however never looked into it and reading through Genesis League Sports connected posts, I recognized many people don't know about it, can't size it, never looked into it and don't see the possible potential in the GLS game, Genesis League Goals.
So I will do it here, using the anyway available for everybody information from internet. I just try to collect it in one place, and highlight a possible future for that industry.
The card collection is very popular in the USA, as it origins from America. It is part of the sports culture there, like in several other countries all around the world.
I did find several different dates about the beginning, so I stay with the wikipedia version:
In 1868, Peck and Snyder, a sporting goods store in New York, began producing trade cards featuring baseball teams. Peck and Snyder sold baseball equipment, and the cards were a natural advertising vehicle. The Peck and Snyder cards are sometimes considered the first baseball cards.
They probably weren't the first, as there are older cards out there. However, that's sure, it's all started with baseball.
As the popularity of baseball spread to other countries, so did baseball cards. By the end of the century, production had spread well beyond the Americas and into the Pacific Isles. Sets appeared in Japan as early as 1898, in Cuba as early as 1909 and in Canada as early as 1912.
It's spread rapidly all around the world. If you are interested in the history, DYOR, the basics you can find on my source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baseball_card
Let's jump to nowadays, and see how big it's grown during the years. I use the https://www.verifiedmarketresearch.com/ details, as I find it the most complex. I checked few others, it shows similar numbers regarding to the size of the industry.
According to this source:
Sports Trading Card Market size was valued at USD 7,878.16 Million in 2021
Yes, you see it correctly. $7.878 billion. This amount is surprised me, too. And this is one of the smallest estimate I've found. Some price it over $15 billion, before pandemic, and there are plenty articles out there about the industry boom during pandemic, in 2020-21.
Lets check out the 'players' in the industry in the USA.
The 4 major league parnters:
NBA Panini America
NFL Panini America
NHL Upper Deck
MLB Topps
Just out of curiousity, I checked the Panini America. The company is a subsidiary of the Italian Panini S.p.A. The mother company's estimated revenue is $1 billion, the Panini America's revenue $165 million.
Now we have some basic details about the industry so we can make a general estimation about the hole industry.
Time to check the soccer, MLS cards subdivision. The Topps Company Inc. produces cards. (The company revenue was $567 million in 2019 and the total value was nearly $1.5 billion.)
The Topps sells new cards for the same value ($10) like GLS sells the Goals NFT card packs.
https://www.topps.com/cards-collectibles/topps-nowr/mlstoppsnow.html
And top of that Topps already started to sell NFT baseball cards and Bundesliga (german soccer) cards, as well!!! You can even buy NFT packs on their page.
https://toppsnfts.com/
My conclusion is the Genesis League Sports has found a newly appeared gap, something unique, what others recognized, too, and trying to occupy that new market (or transfer their business into this digital place).
Based on the value of that hole market there is a real potential, GLS and GL Goals can climb huge montains. It is really an undervalued project on Hive, personally in my opinion is the most valuable. Can GLS become an industry leader in NFT sports card industry? I don't think so, even if it has the potential, however it can bite out a nice piece during the transformation, paralelly appearing blockchain version of the industry.
Unfortunately, I could not find relevant soccer (MLS) card industry related value, revenue, however here is a popular soccer card trading place:
https://getcardbase.com/soccer-cards
If you scroll down on the page, you find some history about soccer cards, and details about most valuable, expensive cards. The most expensive was a Pele card from 1958, sold for $372,000!!!!! However, Cristiano Ronaldo and Messi cards were sold over $200,000 as well. (Sorry to highlight the most expensive ones, but that's more attention taker, so people will more likely check out the rest, 'average' cards value.)
Even if nobody will get rich from it, this is an already existing industry, with huge traffic. It can attract many people worldwide to signing up and using Hive, top of the blockchain game, and I am sure GL Sports will add plenty other games in the future.
And yes, there are questions, how will GLS, GLG do the marketing, what direction they want to take the game, however if they want to fill out the soccer NFT card collection gap + add extra value by the p2e game and their in-game token, it can be a winning combination. The MLS Players Association partnership is showing me, they count on the card collection industry's digitalization, transformation more than Hivers think.
Personally, I put some money in it, because I've seen the potential from this direction, as a newbie.
Hopefully, highlighted some details to people who are already invested in the game, and others who still think about it.
Thanks @belemo and @gungunkrishu for the idea, as they constant focus and posts on other details, different viewpoints motivated me to look into it from the non-crypto eyes.
Sources:
https://goals.genesisleaguesports.com/
https://www.verifiedmarketresearch.com/product/sports-trading-card-market/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baseball_card
https://moneywise.com/managing-money/how-to-earn-money/rare-baseball-cards-worth-a-fortune
https://www.zoominfo.com/c/panini-america-inc/353183182
https://www.topps.com/
https://toppsnfts.com/
https://getcardbase.com/soccer-cards
https://sports.ha.com/