Press & Media Kit
Everything you need to write about HobbyCardIndex in one place: the story, fast facts, founder bio, brand assets, screenshots, and the launch release. Grab whatever you need. Questions go straight to the founder.
Fast facts
Independent and bootstrapped. Based in Victoria, B.C. Not owned by a grader, marketplace, breaker, or manufacturer. Prices are real, completed sales, refreshed nightly.
The story, in one paragraph
HobbyCardIndex (hobbycardindex.com) is an independent sports- and trading-card platform that brings real sold prices, collection tracking, and a phone scanner into one place, across a catalog of more than 7 million cards, sports cards plus Pokémon, Magic, and Yu-Gi-Oh. It was built by Sean Charman, a lifelong collector in Victoria, B.C., over about a year, with no investors and no outside money. The idea came from his own collecting: pricing a single card meant opening four different apps that rarely agreed, then doing the math himself. He figured it should just be one place. Scan a card, see what it actually sold for, track what your collection is worth, and decide whether a card is worth grading, without bouncing between half a dozen tabs.
Founder
Sean Charman is a lifelong card collector in Victoria, B.C. He grew up chasing hockey and baseball rookies in the late '80s and early '90s, drifted out as a teenager, and got pulled back into the hobby through Pokémon with his young daughter before circling back to baseball. He sets up a table at a local card show himself, which is where a lot of the dealer tools came from. He's a collector and self-taught builder, not a programmer by trade, and he built HobbyCardIndex on his own using modern AI coding tools, with most of the work going into the engines behind the scenes, not the screens.
What HobbyCardIndex does
- Real sold prices, not asking prices. It tracks completed sales across the marketplaces collectors already use, including eBay, Fanatics Collect, Goldin, and Heritage, and refreshes values nightly.
- Scan a card in seconds. Point your phone at a card and it identifies the player, year, set, and card number, then pulls the current value and recent sales.
- Collection tracking with a live total. Add your cards and watch the portfolio value move with the market, with CSV export anytime.
- Grading ROI. See what a raw card is worth versus its graded value across PSA, BGS, SGC, and CGC, so you can decide whether grading is worth it before you ship it off.
- A full dealer mode. Inventory management, batch scanning at shows, an eBay listing builder with auto-pricing, profit-and-loss tracking, consignment, expenses, and a customer CRM.
- More for collectors. Player and prospect research hubs, market movers, price alerts, a watchlist, live breaks, a few hobby games, and a full card and sealed-wax database.
- It works in your language. The whole platform runs in English, Japanese, and Spanish, shows prices in a dozen currencies, and switches to Japanese and yen automatically for collectors in Japan. Most hobby tools are English-only.
Pricing
Free to start: your first 25 cards, no credit card, with real price lookups and the market dashboards open. Paid plans add scale and dealer tooling.
- Free. $0, up to 25 cards.
- Pro. $8.99 a month, for serious collectors.
- Dealer. $24.99 a month, the full dealer suite.
- Enterprise. $49.99 a month, highest limits.
Screenshots
From the live platform. Email [email protected] for the full-resolution originals.
Brand assets
Please use the logo on a dark background and keep the proportions. Don't recolor it or stretch it. The brand name is written "HobbyCardIndex" (one word) or "Hobby Card Index."
Press release
The full launch release, formatted as a one-page PDF:
Boilerplate
HobbyCardIndex is an independent platform for sports- and trading-card collectors and dealers. It indexes over 7 million cards and turns real, completed sales into tools collectors can use from their phone at a card show or a laptop at home: collection tracking, a phone scanner, grading ROI, player and prospect research, price alerts, and a full dealer suite for people who run a card business. It runs in English, Japanese, and Spanish. It was built by one collector, takes no outside funding, and is based in Victoria, B.C. Learn more at hobbycardindex.com.
For fact-checkers
- Pricing. Values are real, completed sales (sold prices), aggregated across the hobby and refreshed nightly. They are not asking prices and not estimates. We name the marketplaces we draw from (eBay, the major auction houses, and the graders) but keep the exact pipeline behind the scenes.
- Catalog. Over 7 million cards across 20+ categories, sports and trading-card games alike.
- Independence. Independently owned. Not a grader, marketplace, breaker, or manufacturer. No outside investors.
- Languages and currency. English, Japanese, and Spanish, with prices in a dozen currencies. One of the only hobby tools that runs in three languages.
- We don't make up data. If a card has no recent sold comps, we say so rather than fabricate a number.
Media contact
Sean Charman, founder. The fastest way to reach me is email: [email protected]. Happy to do an interview or a demo, walk through any number on the site, or set you up with a free account to poke around.
See it live
Free to start, no credit card. Search the catalog, build a watchlist, see the market dashboard.
Launch Hobby Card Index