VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (WAVY) — If you were ever a sports fan as a kid, you might have a memory or two of heading down to the local convenience store, and buying a pack of baseball cards.

I know it was a big part of my life, at least.

And then talking about the cards you pulled with your friends around the playground or the lunch table, it’s nostalgic. It connects a memory to whatever athlete you pulled.

Today, card-collecting has taken a whole new form of life. What started out as a hobby for many could obviously still be just that, but it also may be a form of making money through what feels like a sports collectibles Wall Street.

Tory Hermens is the Vice President for dcsports87, which is the fourth-largest card consigner in the United States, and eighth-largest in the world. Growing up as a baseball fan in Virginia, he was just like any other card collector, watching his idols from Hampton Roads crush it in the Majors.

“I grew up a baseball fan, so the David Wrights, the Justin Verlanders, it’s cool to see that,” Hermens said. “Those guys reached god-level athleticism to me.”

Now, he’s responsible for more than 30,000 auctions a week for sports collectibles, and is now approaching four million total sales on eBay. Hermens said the pandemic was a huge cause for the spike in all athletes.

“When COVID hit, there were so many people who wanted to sell collections,” he said.

But there are also people in this area who want a piece of their 757 favorites, such as Allen Iverson, Lawrence Taylor, or even now, Jackson Holliday.

“You’re acquiring these cards thinking, ‘Is this guy going to be an All-Star in five years, a Hall-of-Famer in 20 years?’ You’re kind of chasing that dream,” Hermens said.

“Jackson Holliday hasn’t even played in the majors yet and he has cards going for tens of thousands of dollars,” said B&B Sports Cards shop owner Stephen Hilowitz. “If he were to win the MVP, you could see a really boom with his cards, especially around here.”