Calgary card collectors pump the brakes at U.S. border as tariff questions loom large

Sport card collectors may find their hobby caught up in the Canada U.S. trade war. Tyler Barrow explains.

Card collectors gathered at the Acadia Recreational Complex in southeast Calgary this weekend to swap, sell -- and speculate about how tariffs may impact their passion.

Sports hobbyist Jim Irvine said he generally brings around 20,000 cards priced between a dollar and $5,000 to a weekend show.

Irvine said it isn’t clear whether collectors will be hit by tariffs, mainly because the threat of them has forced collectors to change the way they go about their business.

“We hear rumours that our wax boxes, which is the cards, are going to be taxed 25 per cent,“ Irvine said. ”Hobby supplies will be 25 per cent extra – taxed – and when you look at it, U.S. won’t be paying those 25 per cent extra, just us in Canada.

“So of course U.S. pricing will always be lower than we are.”

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Irvine said he won’t raise his prices to build in the cost of doing business with uncertain U.S. policies changing almost daily until they actually do go up.

“I don’t believe in adjusting phantom prices yet,” Irvine said, “but when the (higher) prices become reality, then you have to adjust.”

Not as active

Card vendor Steven Pullano said it was tough to gauge how tariffs might impact Canadian card collectors -- mainly because Canadians have different priorities than collectors south of the border.

“It doesn’t really affect the hockey (card) community as much because hockey is bigger in Canada,” Pullano said.

“The NFL guys, the Pokeman (card) guys, I don’t know how that affects them – or the non-sports guys, there’s just a lot of uncertainty at this point."

Pullano said the uncertainty is changing the way he operates.

“I’m not being as active as I was,” he said. “Some of the supplies I have in the (United) States, I’m not bringing over because I don’t know what’s going to be happening at the border, at customs.

“So for me it’s more of a hesitation –(I’m) just not as active until we’ll see what happens."

He explained that one thing that’s complicating life is getting a valuable collectible graded.

“In the collectible world, people will send a card like this for grading – and the grading companies are out of the States.

“Its unknown how that card will affect something sent to the States to grading, because do you pay that 25 per cent when it comes back over the border? I don’t know,” he said.

“I have not sent my cards for grading for that reason.”

For others attending Sunday’s event, there was plenty to buy.

“I came here with my daughter,” said Casey Rayus, who was there with daughter Isabella. “I have to check out their Pokemon stuff. I tried to sell my basketball stuff too but we didn’t get to a good price so I’m holding out for now.”

“I’ve collected cards since I was a kid,” said Mikey Nyilas, “and its always cool to come see what collections people have. I’d like to purchase a couple things myself.

“(I) just recently got into collecting Pokemon cards,” he added, “and it’s kind of a cool thing I like to do.”

With files from CTV’s Tyler Barrow