Colton Miller knew that grading wasn’t his future. Well, the grading that involves moving dirt. Moving graded sports cards? That’s where his future might be.

At a crossroads in his young life, Miller decided to take a risk on his hobby and turn it into a business.

What started in the lobby of a car wash and oil change business could soon turn into a brick and mortar establishment, which is indicative of where the playing card industry is headed.

Sports cards and trading card games (such as Pokemon) have reemerged as viable—and sometimes highly profitable—gambles and businesses.

While Western North Carolina has had stores dedicated to this hobby in the past, several have popped up recently, riding a wave of nostalgia and a post-COVID upswing, including Miller’s shop: The Dugout Plus. 

“It was just crazy to think of an oil change, car wash, and a card shop being in the same space,” said shop manager Andrew Searcy. “It is the weirdest triple business that you could ever think of. It got people in the door, and I think now we're kind of to the point that that's why we've got to make the move.”

“It just became too overwhelming,” Miller said, “with the amount of people we've had and that's why we decided (we need) to move.”

The Dugout Plus hopes to relocate to another location, one that would give the shop much-needed foot traffic and a solo storefront to attract new customers.

It seems like a great time for a move into a bigger space, as the card industry continues to grow. The 2025 sports card market delivered another blockbuster year, with combined sales across sports card singles, CCG, and non-sport categories reaching $2.62 billion—including $1.78 billion from sports card singles alone, according to a report from Sports Collectors Daily.

Cards from basketball players like Michael Jordan, Caitlyn Clark, and LeBron James, baseball player Shohei Ohtani, and football players Jayden Daniels and Patrick Mahomes are just a few of the top sellers in the past year. The market on vintage cards, with players like Mickey Mantle, still brings big money.

Pokemon, in its various forms, has also risen past its early-2000s heights. Recently a highly rare Pikachu Illustrator sold for more than $16 million. The card had been purchased in 2021 for $5.275 million. While that’s the top end of the market, single card sales of Pokemon are strong and stores have trouble keeping the product on the shelf.

Ben Stanton, co-owner of 528 Collectibles Asheville

“Pokemon has been big more or less since the late 90s,” said Ben Stanton, co-owner of 528 Collectibles Asheville. “It's the biggest intellectual property in the world. I think Covid kicked off the Pokemon boom again. Here lately, we're seeing another product, One Piece, which is another anime [that] has a trading card game that goes with it, and it's exploding like crazy. You can't find product on the shelves. I even have a hard time getting it. It's been awesome to see that happen here recently. Pokemon is still huge and I would say it is our biggest seller.”

Stanton is new to card shop ownership. He opened 528 Collectibles off Smokey Park Highway in Candler in mid-2025. He co-owns the shop with collector Mike Frey, who lives in Long Island and has two stores with the same name in Locust Valley, New York, and Grafton, Massachusetts. The two met seven years ago through cards.

The shop has grown since Stanton opened, as he’s had to add cases to showcase cards and continued to buy collections to increase his stock. He hosts card game tournaments, like Pokemon and One Piece, at his store. He opened the shop after working for 10 years in marketing and at a point when he needed a new adventure.  

“It was very serendipitous that our partnership began; [Frey] wanted to expand and I wanted to do something different, and this has sort of been a dream since I was a kid,” Stanton said.

There are other places to shop for cards in Western North Carolina, such as Sports Collectibles in Sylva, Collectibles Warehouse in Fletcher, Greg’s Cards & Collectibles in Spruce Pine, and several others. The Asheville Mall, through Pow Productions, has begun to host card shows in its facility and hundreds of people recently showed up to shop. 

The influx of shops and the shows in malls are reminiscent of the hobby during its 80s and 90s boom before it crashed due to market saturation and the 1995 MLB strike.

“I was a kid of the 80s and 90s, and was there for the explosion of cards,” Miller said. “It is crazy to see how the cards themselves and the industry are changing to make collecting a little more exclusive to where cards aren't overly mass produced. To see it coming back to the area, it definitely gives me that 90s kind of nostalgia.” 

Stanton understands that the crash could also happen again.

“There's always worry that, for instance, what if we go into a huge recession all of a sudden,” Stanton said. “A hobby where it relies a lot on disposable income, [that] goes away. So sure, there's always that fear. But I really do think that, even if that were to happen, and I were to have to sit on a lot of these cards, over time, over the years, card prices have just gone up. There's not a single Pokemon set right now that their sealed product isn't worth more than it was when it came out. Baseball cards are a good example. They've been around since the 1800s and they've just gone up and up and up and up. Worst case scenario? I suppose I'd sit on some cards, but then hopefully they'd be worth more later.”