COLUMBUS, OH- Let’s turn back the clock 25 years to a simpler time, a time where you and your friends would gather on your bikes, ride down to the local mini-mart or convenience store, and trade in a couple of crisp George Washington’s that would burn a hole in your pocket for a pack of fresh, mint, out of the box trading cards.

You’d rip open the pack to discover a new set of opportunities to trade, play, learn or idolize until the next pack came around.  Trading cards were a hot commodity in the late 80’s and early 90’s, it was the juvenile equivalent to the stock exchange or the gold rush.

Then…it went away.

Most of those cards were not worth the ink that was printed on them, useless, valueless, and many times homeless or kindle for a fire.

Much like Beanie Babies in the late 90’s, trading cards fell belly up on collectors and left hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars in investors in their wake.

Fast forward to 2020: everything is closing due to a global pandemic, but like a phoenix rising from the ashes- here comes trading cards.  Now, most will tell you that our country had some spare time on their hands, so the prosperous combination of wives and mothers giving ultimatums about trading cards in the attic, and natural boredom from binge-watching reruns of The Office may have pushed that generation from trading cards on the street with their friends, to selling cards online with complete strangers.

Either way, it rebounded the industry back to the days when you could look at a pack of cards, and the nostalgic smell of stale bubblegum came rushing back to your nose.

We sat down with Chuck Filek of Midwest Cards to talk about the new generation of cards, collections, and no matter how much things have changed, some things will always stay the same.