Hobby Musings: Adam Partington, Card Con – Interview
Hobby Musings: Adam Partington, Card Con – Interview Transcript
Editor’s note: Interview filmed February 6, 2025. Some player trade statuses have changed by time of publication. Some text has been changed from original audio for grammar and clarity.
KS: Hey everyone, welcome to another edition of Hobby Musings. I’m Kelsey Schroyer, joined today by Adam Partington. Adam, thank you for joining us.
AP: Hello Kelsey. It’s very good to be here. And thank you for having me on.
KS: So let’s talk Card Con for people who don’t know what it is. What is it?
AP: Well, Card Con is a show that has happened previously. Twice. We have another show: Card Con III that takes place on the last weekend of March 2025. What we are trying to do with Card Con is to create an experience more than just a typical card show. In the United Kingdom now we’re blessed with a lot of good trading card shows. There’s a fantastic show that takes place in London. It’s just taking place this weekend. And there are many of these as well in Scotland, there’s one in Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, all across the country now.
Shows have sprung up and that speaks to the growth of the hobby here. Card Con though, what we are trying to do is create an experience and create the kind of events that you could take your child to. Kids go free at Card Con. Something I’m very big on is bringing as many people into the hobby as possible. But also, if you’re a hardcore collector, it’s the kind of place for you as well. And then everybody in between. Your guys that have just got an interest in one particular sport because there’s going to be someone there with a bit of fame. Therefore they want to go and see them and they may check out cards while they’re there. Or there might be a particular experience that takes place at the show, i.e. you’re big into F1 and there’s an F1 simulator at the show and you come down specifically go on that and then you end up checking out the F1 cards that are available to purchase from vendors.
So ultimately it’s an experience in the collectibles space. It’s not just trading cards. We’ve got memorabilia companies that will be in attendance. We’ve got auction houses, potentially some companies in the coin space as well. So, different kind of forms of collectibles and all that good stuff. What we’re aiming for is an experience really.
KS: Well see, you do so much there. And you talk about the other shows over in that part of the world. How did Card Con kind of come about? Like what was the impetus for starting it in the first place?
AP: I’ve only been involved with the show since October. My experience and knowledge of the hobby is very much based around a manufacturer called Futura who make high end sports cards that’ve been around since 1989. Predominantly focused on the soccer/football card part of the hobby. They have done other sports.
My first iteration with them, the first time I worked for them was when I was a young man. I had a lot more hair then, 2010. Was the first experience I had working in the industry, so I’d like to think I’m a little bit of a veteran. I’ve seen some things and I work for them out in Asia. They’re a very Asian centric brand. Or they were. I was with them out in Asia for a couple of years.
I came back to Britain, built my career as a marketer and I went back to work for Futura in 2020. I came back and found the hobby on fire. I often tell this story. In 2010, it was a completely different world. The collectors that I used to interact with were, a little bit ‘cliche’ in terms of collectors. Right? They were a certain kind of personality type. It was on the periphery of culture. Futura reached out to me in 2020 during the lockdowns and said, look, things are kicking off here. We’ve got quite a few football licenses. We need to build our brand in the English speaking countries. Do you want to come back out here and work for us? I’d maintained a good relationship with them since I moved on in about 2013. So I was like, yeah, absolutely. And I was just blown away by what I came back and discovered. I quickly realized that actually, to use a phrase put out by Josh Luber, trading cards were cool again. Collectibles were cool again.
There was a great opportunity here. So as I said, I’ve been back involved with the industry, working for them for the last four years. I decided to leave in October and kind of pursue different avenues. One of them was to push the trading card event and I got the opportunity with Card Con. What I wanted to do was work with all the elements of the hobby. I’ve been working with this great manufacturer for four years, but I’ve done all that I thought that I could in that role.
So I’ve set up my own kind of thing now as a collectibles hype builder marketeer specialist. One of my first clients that I’m working with in that regard is Card Con. I’ve been involved since October. It’s been a baptism of fire. The reason, I think, why the guys originally set this up was because like me, and this is why we aligned, they thought there was a bit of an opportunity to maybe try and do things a little bit differently. A lot of card shows, again, there’s some great card shows in the UK, there really are, but a lot of them are rinse and repeat, right? There’s not a lot of difference with respect to, when you go to one, you’ve been to kind of them all.
That was something that we wanted to change and that’s been a progression. And we’ve evolved. I think what I’ve done is, because of the work that I’ve done with the manufacturer, I’d built like a real network of sports stars and athletes, legends and current guys. What I’ve been able to do is go in there and say, let’s get some of these big names in. Let’s try and make the budgets work. Let’s create that hype and that excitement off the back of some of these guys.
We’ve got Eddie Hall who’s the former strongest man in the world. We’ve got Luke Humphries, who’s the darts, current darts, world number one. We’re announcing a huge footballer slash soccer player this week who’s played for the likes of Chelsea and Real Madrid. We’ve got big Pokemon influencers. So on that side, we want it to be somewhere where those people bring people into the hobby that wouldn’t otherwise attend a trading card show.
The reason for doing that is because, as I said, I’m very passionate. I believe that there is a collector within all of us. And the more people we bring into the space, the better that will be for everybody. So yeah, I think the motivation was for those original guys that set it up was very much they saw an opportunity to do things a little bit differently. It’s just grown from there. We’re on our third show now, and it’s really exciting to be involved. I’ve loved the last couple of months. We’ve worked hard, and we’re not quite there yet, but all the indications are at the moment this is going to be our biggest show. If we continue to go in terms of ticket sales week on week, we’re going to smash our target. And that’s just great. Again, as I said, I’m really passionate about bringing as many people as I can into the hobby.
KS: So your dealers, the people who are coming and setting up for the show, where are they mostly coming from and what are they usually offering for sale?
AP: Well, as you can imagine here in Blighty, it’s a lot of football. Football is our national sport. It’s something that most people are passionate about. A lot of British collectors start collecting football stickers or football cards. Now, it’s not exclusively football/soccer. There’s a lot of your sports. Of course. The United States is the epicenter of the hobby. It’s where really the trading called scene was founded, wasn’t it? You get a lot of baseball, you got basketball, you get the American sports, you know, American football. You also, there’s a big engaged audience in F1. And then what might be intriguing to some of you guys stateside is the explosion of darts. So darts have, darts cards. Now, a lot of the manufacturers have kind of cottoned on to this that the darts has gone through a real renaissance in terms of its popularity here in Britain. We’ve got a superstar at the moment, a kid who’s only 17, although he looks about 46, called Luke Littler. Luke’s just like, already heading to be world number one.
We’ve invited Luke Humphries to the show, who is the current world number one, but he’s certainly got a test in front of him to maintain that title moving forward. So darts is a sport. Of course just like over in your country, Pokemon TCG is massive. As I mentioned, we wanted to get different kinds of manufacturers there. Different people that play different roles in the hobby. Your graders and we’ve got lots of them. Auction houses, as I said, the guys that protect your collectibles.
As any trading culture, you’re still going to expect to find all your vendors and they are from across the entirety of the hobby. Yu-Gi-Oh, very engaged community here in Britain. So, yeah, lots of TCG stuff. But in terms of sport, it’s heavily focused on football. There are those other sports as well. As I mentioned, F1, the American sports darts now coming into play. People are kind of dedicating themselves to that part of the hobby which is really nice.
KS: You touched on this a little bit earlier about kind of how you found the hobby to be when you came back into it, and you mentioned all the different shows that have kind of come out on the European scene. How do you feel overall the hobby has changed in Europe, though, within like the last five years or so compared to what it was?
AP: It’s been mental, Kelsey. It’s been mental. It really has, I don’t think I don’t know if there’s anywhere that’s been as pronounced as Britain in terms of the change. The reason I say that is because obviously you guys over in the United States have been through a huge renaissance yourselves, right? You’re well aware of what I’m talking about in terms of the values and the interest in the hobby. But in Britain, I think it’s more pronounced because there was hardly any. There wasn’t really a massive scene here. There really wasn’t.
And my first experience at a trading card show was in 2021. We were just coming out of the lockdowns. I was back at Futera and I drove down to the London Card Show at the time which was in like a really small venue. Now it’s grown massively. That was my first kind of experience of going to a card show here. It was a lot smaller. That was 2021. Now, as I said, that’s really grown. We’ve seen that same growth. Card Con 3 is due to be the biggest one. It’s been incredible. It’s mind blowing to me, especially when I think back to the 2010, my first experience and, people just looked at you blankly when you mentioned trading cards. I think we sometimes, all of us who were involved in the business side of the hobby need to kind of just take a step back and really assess this and look at where we’ve come from.
The change that we’ve seen in terms of everything from like the way that people collect. Box breaking has had a huge impact on the hobby there. The explosion of like, different content creators in the space. The fact that you’ve got these really kind of important cultural figures, people like Drake, Logan Paul, Gary Vee, and then even here I think there’s a lot of work to be done in terms of footballers/soccer players embracing the hobby. I think there’s a massive opportunity for footballers there. But even we’ve seen big influences in England and in Scotland and Wales take an interest in the hobby and start to talk about it.
So it’s just been mammoth. I can’t put it into words in terms of the growth here, and it’s so exciting. I don’t see at the moment, I often joke that barring a, you know, a nuclear war or, some kind of huge economic meltdown, I don’t see it stopping, I just think that everything, all the trends, point in one direction. So it’s been huge Kelsey, I think I’ve probably used enough elaborate words or whatever there in terms of explaining it, but it’s just been huge.
KS: With that being said, you’re talking to other collectors or putting on the event or just seeing the scene over in Europe, in the UK. What do you think are the biggest challenges collectors over there are facing right now?
AP: You know, the biggest feedback they provide and like, hey, we’d like to see this be better? I think it’s accessibility to products. It’s very hard for distributors to get access to what they need. I think in a way to demand still outstrips supply in that regard. So I think the challenge is… it’s also, identifying what provides value. There is an element of that where in terms of like, right, things do sometimes get a little bit overhyped. People kind of putting a price tag on things that are a little bit silly, I think sometimes. But on the whole, I think that the biggest issue that collectors have at the moment in Britain is just getting access to the product that they want. Which again is almost par for the course, because that’s what makes certain trading cards very valuable. If everybody could get them, then that would defeat the object of them being a collectible, right?
I think that is certainly a challenge at the moment is, I know that distributors want more products on the whole, box breakers want more products and collectors want more products. So I’d say that’s the underlining issue at the moment for the for the hobby here in in Blighty.
KS: Okay, I’ll get you out of here on this question: you’ve talked about how far Card Con has already come, all the different experiences that it offers. What’s the biggest thing you want to grow? So let’s say we’re talking a year from now. What’s the biggest thing you want to grow of the show in the future?
AP: I think for me it just feeds into that overriding objective that I have of bringing as many people into the to the hobby as possible. Because I think it’s such a great space. There’s a lot of people, without getting too deep, a lot of people feel quite lonely in our society. And that there’s is a bit of a disconnect. I think this is something that a lot of people talk about. I think the way I see these shows are a way to bring people together under the banner of like, one kind of singular interest in terms of trading cards and collectibles. I think that’s really important without, making it sounds a little bit, like cliche or romanticizing it.
For me it’s continuing to build this to obviously, one thing that, because I’m a parent and it’s very hard to constantly find things to do with your kids that are also cost effective. One of the things that I was really proud of was when we decided to let kids come to Card Con for free under the age of 12. And I think it’s really important that we continue to think about the next generation of collectors as well and getting them engaged early. Because I don’t know about you, Kelsey, but I’ve got, like, really nice memories of my mom buying me packs of football cards on a Friday football sticker. Stickers were really big in the 90s here in England. You’d get your Premier League stickers and I’m talking like ’96, ‘97, ’98. And that feeling on like a Friday after school, I remember it. I remember I’d get like two packs, and you’d open them up and then you’d have your sticker book and it’s just such a nice feeling for me.
Then when I was a little bit older, which is incredible to think about now, Kelsey, like riding to the corner shop and buying a couple of packs of Pokemon, which were like 1 pound 20 a pack or something now and then, just like stuffing them in my pocket, which God only knows the value of some of them original cards that I had just riding along on my bicycle flippantly, kind of throwing them to one side when I got home or whatever.
Being mesmerized by the artwork on the front and going and having like, an affinity for a certain Pokemon and stuff like that. I have those memories. You probably have them as well from when you were younger. I imagine most people watching this do as well. I kind of want to make sure that the next to this current generation are going to have those same kind of memories. I think card shows can feed into that. We just got to keep on growing.
I think the hobby here is maturing now, and I think it’s ensuring that there is that accessibility where possible. Just driving that next generation of collectors and keeping everybody engaged and continuing to build the community. I still think there’s a lot of work to be done here in Britain. While things have grown massively, they genuinely have over the last 4 or 5 years. As I said, it’s been incredible to see, there’s still, we’re nowhere near at the level that you guys are. Of course we’ve got a smaller population, but percentage per the amount of people in Britain, it’s still a rather low percentage in comparison to in the United States.
I think there is probably more work to be done. That’s why whenever I’m sitting down with these footballers, because I still do lots of work with them or sports stars, I’m saying look, there’s a big opportunity here for you. What did you collect when you were younger? Oh, right? Yeah! It’s brilliant, wasn’t it. What about if you kind of like start to talk about on your channels and have you ever heard of this platform called WhatNot where you can sell your collectibles on there and, how great would it be to build an audience around the stuff that you enjoyed opening when you were a kid? So, whatever it is trying to plant that seed. Because I think we need a little bit of that, to get that mainstream by.
So yeah, in answer to your question, which has been a bit of a long winded answer, I think it’s next generation of collectors continuing to kind of build on the success that we’ve had with the show. I want to see more people with an audience, more public figures get involved in the hobby. Those are my three goals moving forward and that will feed into how we grow Card Con as well.
KS: That sounds wonderful. So for anyone who wants to find out more information about Card Con, how can they do so?
AP: You can check out the website, which is: card-con.co.uk. We’re updating that by the end of the week. Instagram is the main platform that we’re currently kind of utilizing at the moment alongside Tik Tok and we automatically feed updates through to Facebook. So give us a follow on those platforms.
What I like to do is I like to do a stream once or twice a week with a different person from a different vendor or, a content creator. We talk about the hobby and we talk about what they’re going to be doing at the show, if they’re going to be attending. I also learn a little bit, like, for example, had the Yu-Gi-Oh! guy on last week, a guy called Dylan who’s big got a big community here in the U.K. Before that, it was a guy who specializes in F1 cards and Formula One cards. That was a learning curve for me because that’s two areas of the hobby that I’m not aware of.
I want somebody from your neck of the woods as well. Hopefully we’ll got an American who wants to talk to me about baseball cards and basketball cards, and American football cards and kind of give me the lowdown on what’s hot in those in those areas as well. So it’s worth it. A follow on Instagram, because I like to think we’re not just constantly, like: ‘hey, come to our show.’ Our content is a bit educational.
We’ve got like a price comparison thing where we’re kind of highlighting some of the big sales on eBay, tips for attending your first show. And then as I said, those streams with certain people within the hobby to kind of give those little niches a bit of exposure. So, yeah, there’s some good stuff on there and hopefully provides a bit of value as opposed to just, “buy our tickets, come to our show” type content.
KS: Adam, thank you so much for joining us today. Best of luck with the show.
AP: Thank you. Kelsey, it’s great to be on and thank you for your time.
Hobby Musings: Adam Partington, Card Con
Kelsey’s ability to bring hobby coverage to the mainstream sports fan has been a true asset. GTS is happy to feature his thoughts on collecting in Hobby Musings. The opinions expressed are his and do not necessarily reflect those of GTS Distribution.
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