Card shop growth

Key findings

• CardVault went from 3 stores in February 2025 to announcing its 21st location in November 2026, and says it is aiming for more than 100.
• Replay Sports Cards, which began franchising in August 2024 with three shops, opened its sixth in October 2026.
• The US had 8,803 hobby, toy and game store establishments in 2023, up 12.9% from 7,794 in 2020 and the most in any year since at least 2012 (previous high 8,539). The category includes toy and hobby shops, not only card shops.
• Employment in the same category fell over the period, from 122,761 in 2012 to 104,990 in 2023: more, smaller stores.

Methodology

Chains. We log each store count a chain or a news outlet has published, with the date. We do not count stores ourselves from store locators, because locators change without notice. "Not stated" means the source confirmed a store but not a total.

Hobbiesville is an Ottawa-based hobby and collectibles retailer founded by Edmond Georges and Logan Fournier; the Ottawa Business Journal reported in April 2023 that it had one Ottawa store, a Toronto lease and plans for every major Canadian city. We could not read its current store list when we checked, so its current count is not shown. Fanatics Collectibles' London store is the company's first flagship; we have not found a published count of any further stores.

US Census. Figures are the national total row (all legal forms of organization) for NAICS 451120, Hobby, Toy, and Game Stores, from the County Business Patterns national files for 2012 to 2023, the latest year available when we checked. The code became 459120, Hobby, Toy, and Game Retailers, in NAICS 2022. It covers toy shops, craft and hobby shops and game stores as well as card shops, so it is a ceiling and a trend, not a count of card shops. County Business Patterns counts establishments with paid employees; one-person shops with no payroll are not included.

Coming next. UK Companies House incorporations under retail SIC codes for hobby, toy and game shops, and Statistics Canada business counts. These are planned follow-ups; no figures are shown until we have them.