From the Grand Prix to the grand opening, the step can be short. And Lewis Hamilton has decided to venture into a unique joint venture to launch the Card Culture brand: a retail company for collectible cards – Pokémon, Topps, Magic, if anyone is familiar with the subject. The seven-time Formula 1 champion will thus join Dave & Adam’s Card World – a specialized retailer – to open dedicated stores around the world. Germany, Australia, Asia. And of course, his United Kingdom.
“I see potential and a huge gap to fill,” the driver explained to The Athletic. “There are thousands of stores across the United States, while the rest of the world counts them on the fingers of one hand. I really want to build a home for collectors, players, and kids who love to unbox and be part of a global community. So I tried to figure out the best way to realize this project.” Lewis’s announcement comes shortly after Tom Brady, the NFL legend, bought 50% of the shares of the CardVault store chain, a major player in the industry based in Boston – which after the operation was renamed CardVault by Tom Brady. “I know Tom very well, he’s a friend but we haven’t had a chance to talk about the card business yet,” adds Hamilton, who is also a collector.
The word business is right, because we are talking about a sector with an estimated overall value between 6 and 10 billion dollars globally, with annual growth rates of 5-10% and aimed at doubling the turnover within the next decade. Fueling the bubble of card prices that can be bought for a few euros per pack is the subset of singles, that is, the rarer and more coveted ones, at the center of a dense network of buying and selling online and locally, especially in their graded version – when they undergo real quality certification down to the smallest detail, which can multiply the intrinsic value of the card exponentially. Just think that wrestler Logan Paul set the world record last February for the most lucrative sale of a single item: the Pokémon Illustrator card, sold at auction for 16.5 million dollars. About the price of 41 Ferrari Purosangue (no, it’s definitely not just a game anymore).
The chain inaugurated by Hamilton aims exactly at this segment, focusing on the prized pieces of the most popular card lines. To deepen his understanding of the dynamics of the environment, he consulted the CEO of Fanatics’, the store in London, just steps from Piccadilly Circus, which Lewis himself had inaugurated as a testimonial in 2025. His new partner recounts: “They called me from Fanatics’, noticing what we were doing in the United States with Tom Brady. And they asked me: ‘Are you interested in doing the same thing with Lewis Hamilton?’. I thought about it for a moment, then I said absolutely yes.” The driver agrees. And the combination of cards and motors can begin, under the banner of elite collecting.