The Hobby, the Hunt, and Why I Started Relic Rove

I grew up in the Glenwood and Homewood area of Illinois during an incredible time to be a young basketball fan.

It was the Michael Jordan era.

My brother and I never missed a Bulls game on television. Watching the Bulls wasn’t just something we did when nothing else was on. It was an event. We planned around it. We followed every game, every playoff series, and every moment of those championship years.

Like so many kids growing up around Chicago at that time, Michael Jordan felt larger than life – and still does.

I collected Jordan, Scottie Pippen, Dennis Rodman, Shaquille O’Neal, and Anfernee “Penny” Hardaway. Those were the players who made basketball feel exciting to me.

The games made me love the sport.

The cards gave me a way to hold on to that feeling.

Collecting was also something I shared with my friends and the other kids in the neighborhood.

We were always trading.

We would sit together with stacks of cards, binders, and whatever we had recently pulled, trying to work out deals. Looking back, we probably had no real idea what most of the cards were worth. We just knew which players we wanted.

For me, it was usually Michael Jordan.

If someone had a Jordan card I didn’t own, I wanted to figure out a trade.

I remember a period when Dennis Rodman cards were on fire. Everyone seemed to want Rodman, and I remember thinking that this was my opportunity. I traded away Rodman cards and loaded up on Michael Jordan inserts.

Maybe every trade wasn’t perfectly balanced according to that month’s Beckett.

I didn’t care.

I had more Jordans.

That was what mattered to me.

Those trades were part of the fun. There was no online marketplace, instant recent-sales data, or population report sitting in our pockets. You had your cards, your friends, your favorite players, and whatever information you could get from the latest price guide.

Every month, I couldn’t wait to buy the newest Beckett Basketball Card Monthly from the card shop.

At the time, Beckett was the gospel.

Those pages determined how we thought about values and how we negotiated trades. We looked for the arrows showing which cards were going up or down. We studied the prices, compared players, and tried to determine whether a trade was fair.

If Beckett said a card was worth a certain amount, that was the number.

There wasn’t much debate.

It’s funny to think about how we judged condition back then compared with how collectors look at cards today.

No one I knew was studying every inch of the surface under a bright light with a magnifier. We paid a little attention to corners but not much unless noticeable damage. Edges mattered if there was obvious damage. Centering never even entered my mind as something to examine.

There were no grading reveals, magnification tools, or debates about whether a card had a chance at a gem-mint grade.

If the card looked good in the binder and it was a player you loved, you were happy.

Sometimes I miss that simplicity.

I spent countless hours sitting on my bedroom floor sorting cards into binders.

I would organize them by player.

Then I would decide teams made more sense.

Then I might reorganize everything by brand, set, year, value, or whichever system seemed perfect that day.

I would finish reorganizing the collection, look at it for a while, and then decide there had to be a better way.

So I would start over.

I probably organized the same cards ten different ways.

Collectors understand that organizing isn’t always a task you complete. Sometimes the organizing itself is part of collecting. It gives you an excuse to look through everything again, rediscover cards you forgot about, and think about what you still want to find.

Even then, protecting and organizing the collection was part of the enjoyment.

I just didn’t know it would someday help inspire a business.

Like most kids, I didn’t have an unlimited card budget as a kid.

If I wanted cards, I had to earn the money.

During the summer, I mowed lawns around the neighborhood. I once spent an entire day painting a shed so I could earn money to buy cards.

During winters, I shoveled driveway after driveway whenever it snowed. I would keep going as long as there were neighbors willing to pay and snow left to move.

Most of what I earned eventually made its way to the local card shop.

Every couple of weeks, I would go in telling myself I was only going to buy one or two packs.

Somehow, I would leave with closer to ten.

Collectors know how that happens.

There was always the chance that Jordan was in the next pack. Maybe it was a special insert, a favorite player, or simply a card I had never seen before.

One more pack always felt justifiable.

And then one more after that.

I still remember the smell of that card shop.

It was located in an older building, and it had that distinctive combination of old wood, cardboard, paper, wax packs, and history.

It’s difficult to describe unless you spent time in shops like that.

To me, it smelled beautiful.

The shop felt completely different from every other store. It wasn’t polished or corporate. It felt lived in. There were cards in glass cases, boxes behind the counter, handwritten prices, magazines, packs, and collectors coming in to talk about the hobby.

The owners were always friendly.

They made me feel welcome even though I was just a kid spending lawn-mowing and snow-shoveling money. They answered questions, talked about players, and understood why opening those packs mattered so much to me.

It never felt like they were simply selling me something.

It felt like we shared a genuine love of the hobby.

That experience has stayed with me. When I think about the kind of company I want Relic Rove to become, I think about how those card-shop owners made a young collector feel.

They made me feel like I belonged.

Opening packs was its own ritual.

I would line them up and organize them from the lowest-priced pack to the highest-priced pack before opening anything.

The less expensive packs came first.

The most exciting pack was saved for last.

That was before products like Flair, E-X2000, Finest, and Planet Metal entered the picture and changed what premium basketball cards could look and feel like. I absolutely loved the card art, design, and technology – it’s just the price was out of reach for a little guy.

Those became some of my favorite products.

They didn’t feel like ordinary cards. The designs, finishes, materials, inserts, and overall presentation made them feel special before you even knew which player you had pulled.

That progression—from basic packs to premium products—added another level to the chase. It wasn’t only about the player anymore. The set, the design, the insert, and the rarity all became part of what made a card meaningful.

To this day, 1990s basketball inserts remain at the center of what I love to collect.

My favorite collecting experience as a kid was going to a local mall card show.

To me, it was heaven.

There were tables filled with cards, glass cases holding cards I had only seen in Beckett, boxes to dig through, and collectors everywhere.

Every table offered another chance to find something.

Even when I couldn’t afford the best cards in the room, I loved looking at them. I loved searching through boxes, comparing prices, talking about players, and imagining what I might add to my collection someday.

You never knew what was waiting at the next table.

That feeling has stayed with me.

It’s the excitement of the hunt.

Sometimes you know exactly what you’re looking for. Other times, you don’t know until you see it.

Then I became a teenager.

Cards were replaced by music, girls, friends, and trying to be cool.

I didn’t make some major decision to stop collecting. It just happened. Other parts of life took over, and cards slowly became something connected to my childhood instead of something I actively pursued.

For years, collecting lived mostly in my memories.

But the connection never completely disappeared.

Watching Bulls games with my brother was still there.

The neighborhood trades, and learning how to negotiate, were still there.

The hours spent organizing binders were still there.

The lawn mowing, snow shoveling, monthly Becketts, card-shop smell, and mall card shows were still there.

Collecting had become part of me, even when I wasn’t actively collecting.

I found my way back to sports cards in my early 30s, a few years before the COVID-era hobby boom.

It started when I came across a sealed box of 1992–93 Stadium Club Basketball Series 2, the Beam Team series, at a flea market for $20.

The cards I wanted were Michael Jordan or Shaq.

As I worked through the packs, I felt like a kid again. Every wrapper carried the same possibility I remembered from the card shop.

Maybe this was the one.

I eventually pulled a Beam Team card.

It was Mark Price.

No disrespect to Mark Price, but that was a bummer.

Still, opening that box brought something back that I had not felt in years.

The experience wasn’t only about whether I pulled the Jordan.

It was the anticipation. It was reconnecting with 1990s basketball cards. It was remembering the excitement of opening packs and chasing something meaningful.

That sealed box helped bring me back into the hobby along with some of my friends.

By the time the pandemic arrived, I was already collecting again. But like a lot of people, I started spending more time watching sports-card videos, listening to hobby content, learning about the market, and following the stories of people building businesses and communities around cards. The sports-card landscape had changed—the products, platforms, grading, market data, creators, and businesses around it. There was a lot for me to relearn.

These creators did not start Relic Rove, and I don’t want to suggest that they endorse the company.

They were simply part of my return to the hobby.

Each one showed me something different.

Gary Vee opened my eyes to the investment potential of sports cards, but what connected with me most was his understanding of consumer love and nostalgia – the psychology behind it all.

Cards can take people back to some of the happiest times in their lives.

For me, that meant being a kid, watching the Bulls with my brother, trading with neighborhood friends, and chasing Michael Jordan cards.

Gary’s perspective helped me understand that people weren’t returning to cards only because they thought prices might increase. They were returning because cards made them feel something.

That emotional connection is powerful.

Ryan from CardCollector2 was another creator I followed closely.

I became glued to his story—his growth as a hobby influencer, building his card store and business, and connecting with collectors along the way.

I participated in some of my first card breaks with Ryan. At the time, I was working in the health supplements industry, so after one of the breaks I sent him some protein as a small thank-you.

A few years later, I ran into him at The National in Chicago. To my surprise, he remembered me. He laughed and told me that when the protein showed up, he honestly thought someone was playing a joke on him and trying to tell him he needed to bulk up.

It's a small story, but it stuck with me. As his business grew, he still remembered one interaction with a collector. That says something about the kind of community this hobby can create, and it's something I've always respected about Ryan and CardCollector2.

Watching his journey made the business side of the hobby feel real. It never came across as a polished overnight-success story. You could see the work, the decisions, the setbacks, the growth, and the importance of building a genuine community around the business. Over time, you could also see how that hard work helped him build something meaningful for his family, which made the journey even more relatable and inspiring.

Graded Card Investor, who I originally knew as PSA Collector, helped reconnect me with what I genuinely loved collecting: Michael Jordan and rare 1990s basketball inserts.

That was an important reminder.

It is easy to get distracted by whichever player, product, or investment is receiving the most attention at a particular moment. His content brought me back to the cards I genuinely wanted to own and loved.

Sports Card Investor and Geoff Wilson gave me another perspective.

I appreciated the investment side, his early entrance before much of the pandemic hype, and the use of software and market data to support more informed collecting and investment decisions.

I still believe emotion and personal connection should drive a collection. At the same time, good data can help collectors make better decisions when they are spending meaningful amounts of money.

It was also just cool to watch all of these channels grow as the hobby grew.

King of the Kards stood out because of his kindness and obvious love of collecting. He always came across as a genuine person who enjoyed the cards and the people around them.

Roth Cards brought a positive sense of grind and hustle. Building anything meaningful takes consistency, and I respected that energy.

My favorite, though, is probably Chasing Cardboard.

I love the way the show tells other people’s stories. There’s respect in the way collections and collectors are approached. There’s integrity.

And there’s always the hunt.

That connects directly with what I love about collecting and, eventually, with the meaning behind the Relic Rove name.

To rove is to move, explore, and search.

A relic is something meaningful that carries a story.

Chasing Cardboard (Ty Wilson) captures that idea in a way that feels real. It isn’t only about arriving at a house, calculating the value of a collection, and completing a transaction.

The story of the collector matters.

How the cards were found matters.

Why they were kept matters.

I also connected with Ty’s strong faith and realistic approach to business. He doesn’t pretend success is easy.

It takes a ton of work to sell a ton of cards.

That business reality stuck with me as I began developing Relic Rove.

Passion matters.

But passion does not replace the work.

Collecting isn’t only about how much your collection is worth.

Financial value matters. Collectors spend real money, make investment decisions, and want to protect what they own.

But price is not the whole story.

The value is also found in the conversations, friendships, trades, and memories created through the hobby.

It is the common ground between two people who may otherwise have very little in common.

It is sharing collecting with your children.

It is showing your son or daughter the player you loved when you were their age.

It is passing something meaningful to the next generation and knowing that the story attached to it may matter more than the card’s latest sale price.

That kind of value is part of what makes the hobby worth carrying forward.

I’d love to hear your story.

Every collector has a story.

I’d love to hear yours.

Protect what matters. Organize the journey. Move with confidence. Strengthen the hobby along the way.

— Jonathan Ochoa
Founder, Relic Rove™