Victoria entrepreneur takes on giants in the trading card industry

A Victoria man has big dreams for the future of trading cards.

Sean Charman, the creator of HobbyCardIndex.com, has been receiving buzz in the tech world after the release of a site that he hopes will change the playing field in the trading card industry.

Charman is a family man in Victoria, and has owned a roofing business in the city for the last 25 years. He’s hoping for this to be his next venture.

What started as a hobby collecting baseball cards when he was a child turned into a bonding exercise for Charman and his daughter as she started collecting Pokémon cards.

The hobby of trading cards is a popular one worldwide, with millions of cards being sold and traded on online marketplaces and in-person at conventions and hobby shops each year.

Charman says he saw an opening in the industry, and despite the large apps and marketplaces that already exist in the space, thought that there was room for a new player.

“Everything was really outdated and clunky. There really wasn’t much to offer,” Charman told Victoria Buzz.

“I’m kind of a computer geek, a little bit, and I was like, ‘why don’t I just build something that has all the tools you could ever use?'”

Charman said he felt there was a need for a new face in the industry—a gap in the market that he could take advantage of and help people streamline the process of trading cards.

“Even the big players don’t have a database of cards or anything,” Charman explained.

“You can’t scroll through and look up sets and see all the cards in the sets, they don’t have grading tools, or it just shows you the last eBay sales.”

Hobby Card Index seeks to change all of that.

The site has only been live for about a month, but has already been gaining interest from major outlets in the space.

Sportscollectorsdaily.com, one of the larger publications for sports collectors in the United States, wrote a piece about Charman and the site, which he says drove a lot of traffic when it was published. The publication highlighted the platform’s card scanning capabilities, as well as the price tracking capability.

The site has also had coverage from Techcouver, a major player in the world of tech innovation in Vancouver. He also said he’s got several podcast appearances lined up in the coming weeks.

The website is a bit of a revelation, and deserves the praise it’s received from those in the know in the tech industry.

It operates in three languages—English, Spanish and Japanese—with plans to expand on those in the future. It also shows prices in 12 different currencies and automatically switches to the appropriate language and currency depending on location.

Hobby Card Index users can index cards from all major sporting leagues, including MLB, NFL, NHL, NBA and the WNBA among others, as well as non-sports cards like Pokémon and Magic the Gathering.

The site is based on a subscription-based model, with a free option that allows users to access the card marketplace and scan up to 25 cards to get a feel for what the website offers.

After that, the advanced subscription tier offers the ability to scan several thousand cards, among other benefits.

Charman says his goal is to have 5,000 users by the end of the year, and 50,000 in five years’ time. Ultimately, he says when people talk about apps in the space of trading cards, he wants Hobby Card Index to be one of the first five names out of their mouths.

For someone who’s new or not familiar with trading cards, it’s an industry that always seems to have legs to it. No matter what the rest of the hobby world looks like, trading cards has always been popular, and is going through a particular boom at the moment.

Charman says collectors come from all walks of life and that the hobby appeals to many different kinds of people.

“There’s so many different kinds of collectors, the guys that are ripping packs, the investors, the set builders who want to get all of the cards in a set.”

He explained that his last name is what initially sparked the interest in his daughter, with the popular Pokémon Charmander being the gateway into the hobby.

If you’ve never given it a try, a hobby card show is a great place to start to see if the hobby is for you.

If it sticks, or if it’s something you’re already fond of, give HobbyCardIndex a try next time you get a card!