Hobby Korea Recap Plus Reflection On Sports And Pokemon Card Market In South Korea

You're listening to Cards to the Moon, a podcast about trading cards from both a collector and investor perspective. We hope you'll stick around for the ride as we take a deep dive into the state of the hobby, share some hot takes, hopefully some useful advice and fun stories along the way. Hey guys, welcome back to Cards to the Moon. My name is Clark from 5cardguys.com and add to 5cardguys on Instagram, YouTube, and on Facebook. It's going to be a solo episode from me because I just landed back home in Toronto after spending two weeks on vacation in Korea and Japan. Now I know there's been some sports card news over the past couple of weeks while I was away, and I do plan to touch on some of them with my podcast co-hosts as we get back on our regular schedule over the next month. But for this week's episode, it'll probably be another shorter one again as I try to get back on Eastern Toronto time and I'm currently wrestling with my own body not to shut down and sleep in the early evening. So I'm going to try to record this episode to keep me awake a little longer to get my sleep schedule back to normal as quickly as possible. And I'm going to also have this available on YouTube, which will include some of the videos and pictures of what I'm talking about in this pod if you're more of a visual person. Okay, today for this episode, I wanted to do my full recap of my trip to Hobby Korea when I was in Seoul. And the next episode, which I'll aim to put out later this week, will be my full recap of my trip to the Mint sports card stores in both Osaka and Tokyo. I went to three in total actually while I was in Japan. And I'll also do a little bit of a recap on my trip to the two Pokemon centers as well. But for now, my trip to Hobby Korea. First off, I love that there's a hobby shop like Hobby Korea in Seoul. To me, it's just physical proof that the hobby is indeed growing beyond North America. And I remember, I think it was a couple of seasons ago on the pod, when I did the interview with Stephanie Garcia, aka you might know her better as Mama Breaks. And we were talking about a statistic back then that showed much of the hobby growth was coming internationally from different parts of the world getting into sports cards. And now Pokemon cards, of course. So actually going into a place like Hobby Korea was this moment when something we were saying or discussing almost abstractly became a little more concrete. Now I've seen a few YouTube videos of other collectors visiting Hobby Korea, which is by the Gangnam district. Yes, that Gangnam district you might have heard about in a very popular song. And to be honest, the store was smaller than I expected. But I did like the cleanliness of the store, the big screen TV for entertainment, nice tables for you to sit down and rip your packs or boxes of cards. They even had sleeves and top loaders available nearby for any big cards you might hit. And the staff, they were very friendly. I had a chance to ask if they had any Otani cards, of course. And unfortunately, one of the staff mentioned whenever they have some, it gets bought pretty quickly. So the day I went, there were none out in the display case. And as for slap singles, there wasn't actually that much. Not just Otani, but cards in general that particular day. But they did have more lower end singles and top loaders that you could peruse through, kind of like dollar boxes, separated by the different sports categories. And I just ended up picking up a Son Heung-min soccer card for 3,000 South Korean won, which is about $2 US. I also got a blaster box of 2025 Top Stadium Club, which if you're a listener of the pod, you know I always say this, it's still a very underrated set. And I thought it was reasonably priced, but if I'm being honest, you could probably get blasters and hobby boxes cheaper in North America. And I don't know if it has to do something with distribution costs, like whether it would cost more in general to ship boxes to Asia. But again, it's not outrageous, the price wasn't that outrageous. It was actually nice to see they had all the latest Topps baseball card products and sets available, as well as Bowman, I saw some newer releases of Topps Chrome Basketball as well. And at the end of the day, for me I just wanted to rip and see if my luck was any better in South Korea than it was back home. And no, my luck still sucks when it comes to ripping boxes of cards, whether it's home or whether it's abroad. But like I said, the staff, very friendly, and when I was ripping, one of them asked me if I hit anything good, and just seeing if I was enjoying the store experience. One cool thing for me to see was a Hyun Jin-Roo autograph card. I believe it was from the Stadium Club set. And as a former Toronto Blue Jay, as a Korean pitcher, I thought it would be a nice pickup. But when I looked it up on eBay, I just saw cheaper comps. And I think, this is my opinion, that one advantage we have here as North American collectors is that it's much easier to buy off eBay than it is for collectors abroad. For example, I've come across listings on eBay where it's only sold to US and Canadian collectors. Ripping overseas is either too cost prohibitive, or I believe the authenticity guarantee isn't available for sellers abroad, so that's another level of risk. But please correct me if I'm wrong, but that's the impression I get whenever I see listings from other parts of the world. In any case, my point is, the singles here, they might be over eBay comps, but if you really want the card, and you live in Seoul, it might be worth the premium just to pay it and have it in hand right away than hoping to find and buy one online, which might be more difficult to do, or it might end up being closer to comps anyway once you factor in the added shipping costs. I did ask about Pokemon cards, since the Pokemon card craze is huge around the world, and it didn't seem to be any different in Korea. At Hobby Korea in particular, I only saw the one Korean boxed set of Pokemon cards. I got to ask Roy about it, my podcast co-host, but I didn't recognize the set myself. It had the character Ogrepon on it, and the only reason why I know Ogrepon is my oldest son is a big fan of this character for some reason. But yeah, that was the only one I saw. Again it was reasonably priced, I just thought I'd be better off buying Pokemon cards in Japan, which I'll talk about in the next episode. One more thing about Pokemon cards, I saw some of the smaller shops that sell souvenirs on busy tourism streets sell several booster bundle boxes. Again, it's in Korean, but I didn't see any over 100 bucks US, so I thought the pricing was reasonable, and I did recognize some of the booster bundles like the Korean version of Destined Rivals and 151 and Mega Evolution for sale. Anyway, love seeing cards at different places across the city, and as for Hobby Korea, would I go back again the next time I'm in Seoul? For sure. And I know there are other hobby shops in Korea, so I would probably want to check them out too. But for this Korea trip, I ended up only staying for 3 or 4 full days, so I didn't have much time to hang out at the card store, but I'm glad I got at least a couple of hours. And to go off on a little tangent, if you've never been to Seoul, you gotta go visit. I might be biased as a Korean Canadian telling you this, but the food is great and cheap, so many different things to do in the city, from doing more traditional historical things like visiting the Korean War Museum or going to the Palace Grounds, and for the more modern vibes of Seoul, just hit any of the vibrant night time markets. It's crowded for sure, but the food stalls are diverse, and did I say cheap? It's very affordable. That reminds me, I saw a funny video the other day about Japan, and I think it applies also to my trip to Korea, but the video has a guy walking tens of thousands of steps just visiting all the different sites, and he's thinking he's burning a lot of calories, but then it shows him eating and eating and eating various food items as he puts all those calories back on. And you know what? That was pretty much my trip. And I also got to visit family of course, which is always nice, and my two boys got to see what Korea was like, so an awesome trip all around. Too bad for them though, my boys, they're going back to school tomorrow. So anyway, there's my quick endorsement for visiting Korea, and that's the episode for today. Like I mentioned off the top, I will have my recap of Mint and the Pokemon Centers in Japan for the next episode. Thanks for tuning in, I'll talk to you guys soon. Hey, thanks for listening to Cards to the Moon. We'd really appreciate you subscribing to our podcast wherever you listen to your podcasts, and you can also connect with each of us on Instagram at 5cardguys, or you can follow Hyung at Integrity Sports Cards, or John at TradeUatRecess. You can also check us out at 5cardguys.com. Thanks again, and hope to connect soon.