“We actually never intended on founding a company. Today, there are 20 people on the company payroll.

In 2015, we rented our first office and employed two full-time employees and two part-timers,” says Markus Schwarze. Once we outgrew it, we relocated to the cellar then to the guest room. “In the beginning, our warehouse was my old bedroom. In 2008, he returned to the idea while he was enrolled in college and ended up founding Gate to the Games with his mom, in order to professionally sell cards in his own online shop his mother continues to oversee packaging and shipping. He initially only sold on Ebay, but stopped the practice after high school. Markus Schwarze’s trading card business nearly never came to be. So that’s why I sold packs as a teenager after school.” Thus begins the Gate to the Games saga in 2004 in the small German village of Schönebeck in Sachsen-Anhalt. “You can earn more with card packs than you can with complete collections.

I realized that the return would be much less than what I originally paid,” Markus Schwarze, founder and managing director of Gate to the Games, told OMR. When I decided to part ways with my collection, I went on Ebay with the intention of selling it for some spending money. “I played with trading cards myself and at some point I had a pretty big collection. Gate to the Games founder Markus Schwarze But the trickle-down effects are real as success has not been limited to the industry behemoths.

According to a 2017 study, 6.4 million Europeans played physical card games like these three. The Pokémon Company, a subsidiary of Nintendo, turns over 2 billion Pokémon cards a year while Yu-Gi-Oh’s parent company Konami eclipsed the 25-billion mark for cards sold in 2011. Magic: The Gathering, which is now owned by Hasbro, generates a reported USD 300 million in annual revenue. Magic: The Gathering has been around for a quarter of a century, Pokémon trading cards have been on the market since 1996 and Yu-Gi-Oh cards since 1999–the trio continue to be extremely successful in the trading card game. Get on board or miss the boat! Get your tickets 400+ a-list international speakers, 300+ exhibitors, 4 stages, 150 Masterclasses, 2 epic parties and more! It’s 2 days of insights, inspiration and entertainment-and it’s happening this May 7 & 8 in Hamburg, Germany. The biggest event you’ve never heard of is the OMR Festival 2019.

Mtg card sets from the 90s