By Sal Barry, Puck Culture and In The Cards writer
Trade wars between the United States and countries such as Canada, Italy and China have hurt hockey card collectors. But the space is now adapting
A hobby like trading card collecting should be a distraction from everyday life. Ripping open new packs of cards – finding an autograph of your hockey hero or a rookie card of an exciting new star – should serve as a temporary respite from the rigors of life.
But sometimes, the everyday world pushes its way in. Such is the case with tariffs imposed by the United States on countries including Canada and China, and those countries’ reciprocal tariffs imposed on the U.S.
This has made the hobby more expensive for collectors on both sides of the U.S.-Canada border, but in different ways.
“The whole situation is unfortunate,” said Jeff Tyson, owner of Maximum Cards & Collectibles in Whitby, Ont. “It’s the bigwigs moving the chess pieces around, and it’s the little guys, not just the small vendors like myself but end consumers, that are getting pinched.”
In March, the U.S. imposed tariffs on products imported from Canada. Canada then imposed retaliatory tariffs of 25 percent on U.S. goods. That included some – though not all – hockey cards.
“After the COVID pandemic, all of the manufacturers started to look for press time anywhere, just to meet the demand for cards,” said David Yeates, president and CEO of Grosnor Distribution, a major wholesaler of toys and trading cards in Canada.
According to Yeates, roughly a third of Upper Deck’s hockey card products are printed in the U.S., about a third are printed in Italy and close to a third are printed in Canada. (Upper Deck declined to speak with The Hockey News for this story.)
Thus, certain products, such as Upper Deck’s annual CHL and Team Canada Juniors sets, are printed in Canada and are spared from tariffs.
Likewise, Upper Deck’s flagship releases – Upper Deck Series One, Series Two and Extended Series – are printed in Italy. Even though these sets are first shipped from Italy to Upper Deck’s headquarters in California, they are considered a product of Italy and exempt from Canadian tariffs as well.
But many of Upper Deck’s more premium card sets, such as Upper Deck Ice, O-Pee-Chee Platinum and The Cup, are printed in the United States and subject to that 25 percent surcharge when shipped north of the border. This is causing higher prices for collectors and lower profits for dealers.
“All manufacturers that had tariffs applied in Canada have tried to help out when they can,” Yeates said. “There’s some cost sharing going on.”
It's the bigwigs moving the chess pieces around, and it's the little guys that are getting pinched- Jeff Tyson, owner of Maximum Cards & Collectibles.-
One popular product hit particularly hard is the 2023-24 The Cup set, which was released in June 2025. (The Cup comes out a year or so after the season it represents.) The Cup is Upper Deck’s most expensive hockey card set and usually sells for around $1,000 for a six-card box.
This year’s The Cup set includes rookie cards of 2024 Calder Trophy winner Connor Bedard.
“I’m paying roughly $266 (Cdn) more per box this year for The Cup than I did last year,” Tyson said. “I don’t know if all of that is because of the tariffs. Sports cards in general seem to get more expensive every year. Plus, this is the ’23-24 set, so we’re still dealing with the ‘Bedard Tax,’ where things are more expensive than they’d normally be. But the tariffs definitely factor into the increase.”
However, higher prices are not necessarily a deterrent for collectors.
“The hot products still sell well,” Tyson said. “The Cup is selling well, even at the increased price point. But it certainly cuts down on the margins. We already have thin margins on a lot of products to stay competitive within the marketplace.”
Card grading, a huge part of the hobby since 2020, has also experienced some problems for Canadian collectors because companies like PSA Grading are based in the U.S. While PSA has an office in Halifax, N.S., Canadians could choose to ship their cards to PSA’s headquarters in Santa Ana, Calif., to take advantage of an easier submission process, bulk pricing and faster turnaround times.
PSA has suspended that option for now.
“After the tariffs were announced in March, we made the very difficult decision to not allow customers from outside the U.S. to ship cards directly to our office in the U.S.,” said Ryan Miller, GM of PSA International. “We were extremely nervous about our customers being charged significant tariffs.”
Canadians who want their cards graded by PSA can still send them to PSA’s Halifax office, which in turn sends them to the U.S. for grading and files the necessary paperwork to have the cards classified as temporary imports, exempting them from tariffs. In September, PSA will open a Toronto location that will offer a streamlined submission process and bilingual customer service.
In the U.S., hockey card prices haven’t changed much. The tariff on goods from Italy imported into the U.S. is 10 percent and increases to 20 percent in July. Cards printed in Canada, such as the CHL and Team Canada Juniors sets, aren’t widely sold in the U.S.
“We haven’t been too affected by the tariffs for hockey products since they are primarily manufactured in the U.S.,” said David Reel, VP of sports and entertainment and strategic global business development at U.S.-based GTS Distribution, a collectibles wholesaler. “That’s where the majority of our customers are located.”
But the 30 percent tariff on Chinese goods is affecting U.S. card collectors in another way. Numerous hobby supplies are manufactured in China, such as trading card toploaders, soft card sleeves, snap cases, plastic sorting trays and puck holders. The tariffs the U.S. has imposed on Chinese-made products has driven up the wholesale costs of these supplies.
While neither the U.S. nor China is backing down in their trade war, things might be more hopeful for U.S.-Canada relations.
“Canada now has a new administration, and there’s a lot of chatter about our two governments speaking,” Yeates said. “So, I’m hoping these tariffs go away because it is a crime. The tariffs don’t come out so much out of my pocket. I’ve absorbed some of the costs, but I can pass a lot of it on. It definitely comes out of the stores’ pockets. People will only pay so much for collectibles. Hobby shops are losing their margins because the market will only bear a certain price.”
Tyson concurs and is also optimistic, adding:
“We’re getting through it. The hobby is strong. People still love their sports cards, and Upper Deck is putting out some great hockey products. But hopefully, tariffs will be gone soon, and the prices will shrink. And everyone will feel better about that.”
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