Trading card hobby in Canada impacted by mounting trade war centred around U.S.

A 1990 Topps Trevor Linden hockey card graded by PSA is shown in Toronto on Friday, April 25, 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Joe O'Connal

MISSISSAUGA — The international trade war started by U.S. President Donald Trump has complicated collecting trading cards in Canada.

Several facets of the hobby have been impacted by the shifting web of tariffs between Canada, China, and the United States, with distributors, retailers, resellers, auction houses and collectors riding the highs and lows.

Jeff MacDougall, the general manager of 401 Games in Toronto and Vaughan, Ont., said that virtually every aspect of his business has been affected.

“There’s a lot of things that it’s getting tagged on to, primarily Pokémon cards, Magic (the Gathering) cards, sports cards, Yu-gi-oh cards are the big ones,” said MacDougall, adding that he has written to several members of federal and provincial parliament about Canada’s reciprocal tariffs. “Konami, who makes Yu-gi-oh cards, they’re absorbing quite a bit of the tariff themselves, but that’s not the case with anything else.

“We’re seeing a 25 per cent increase on all that stuff from our suppliers.”

The issue is twofold for retailers.

Getting new packs of hockey, baseball, Pokémon or Magic: The Gathering cards into Canada is more expensive because they are printed in the U.S. and subject to retaliatory tariffs. Supplies to protect and display cards, like thin plastic sleeves, are becoming harder to find because they are subject to two sets of duties — one as they enter the U.S. from China and then again when they are sent north into Canada from American distributors.

“Any board games we carry are printed in China and so much of the supplies like sleeves and supplies that people use to put their hot trading cards in, that’s all China stuff, right?” said MacDougall. “From what I understand, in most cases, if anybody’s got a project that’s ready to ship, they’re not shipping it. They’re storing it in China right now.”

It was a widely discussed topic at the Sport Card Expo Toronto on Friday. Thousands of collectors are expected to visit the show at the International Centre in Mississauga, Ont., near Toronto’s Pearson Airport, over the weekend.

Elliott Frankl, president of SRM Sports & Entertainment, is a Canadian distributor for BCW Supplies, an American company whose line of storage boxes, sleeves and hard cases are produced in China. He said that the tariffs and duties on the supplies made them so expensive that he’d have to sell them at a loss.

“We had to cancel our last couple orders, so now there’s a shortage of all this stuff,” said Frankl, gesturing toward his remaining stock. “It’s not only us that’s affected. There’s a few other companies that make supplies for the hobby as well and it’s the same problem.

“We were talking with (BCW) about possibly having the stuff shipped directly from China to Canada, to avoid all the tariffs, but we couldn’t do that in time for the show. But who knows in the future.”

Grading — a process where a third-party business examines a card, evaluates its blemishes, then seals it in a hard plastic shell with a certification — has also been directly impacted by the mounting trade barriers.

Professional Sports Authenticator is the world’s largest grading company. The U.S.-based business issued a statement on April 2 that it would no longer be directly accepting cards from Canadian collectors. Instead, it would only accept submissions from authorized representatives in Canada.

This has been a boon for Canadian PSA dealers like N.D. Sports Cards in Vaughan.

“We’ve been in business for three years, and last year was a record year for us,” said Eric Maggiacomo, co-owner of N.D. Sports Cards, in his booth at the Sport Card Expo. “In four months this year, we’ve already matched last year.”

Canadian-based grading companies have also been impacted, for better and for worse.

“We’ve definitely had more (Canadians) not willing to send stuff cross-border, which is obviously beneficial for us and but at the same time, we’ve had some U.S. customers that have been a little more skeptical because there’s a big ‘what if.’ Especially when you’re dealing with the type of value of some of these items,” said Nathan Barnai, president and CEO of KSA Grading and Authentication Services. “There’s just so much uncertainty that they’re not willing to send it this way either.

“It’s definitely having an impact both ways.”

Tony Piacente, co-owner of iCert Certification Services, said that his business wasn’t seriously impacted by the tariffs on goods manufactured in China, but that the uncertainty of how duties will be enforced in the future has caused a lot of angst for his clients.

“We did have customers trying to rush orders, to try to squeeze orders in prior to to the tariffs taking place,” said Piacente. “We’re getting a lot of questions coming at us about how it will affect things going forward.

“There’s so much uncertainty, but we don’t know from one day to the next what changes will happen.”

Several resellers — small businesses that sell prized individual cards at conventions or through online auctions like eBay — said they weren’t overly concerned with the tariffs, although they were feeling the pinch from the more expensive supplies.

Asking to remain off the record, one reseller said they would find “the least expensive way” to get cards to customers in the U.S. One reseller noted that trading cards “are very small” and another laughed and said he had been sending a lot of birthday cards lately.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 25, 2025

John Chidley-Hill, The Canadian Press