'Kids should be able to buy something in a shop to open': Card Fest host returns to Preston - and says trading cards should be for everyone
As Preston Card Fest made its grand return, organiser Ben Wearden fears trading cards have become too expensive for genuine fans - including children.
Preston’s biggest trading card event is now rounding off until Christmas.
More than 300 card collectors, traders, and general enthusiasts descended upon the city centre for the Preston Card Fest’s Halloween Special, which saw a range of activities, traders, and competitions until 5pm today.
“The beauty of Card Fest is that we have such a wide demographic of people attending,” Card Fest organiser Ben Wearden told the Lancashire Post.
“It’s beautiful to try and bring the community together. You have your hardcore collectors who’ll spend thousands of pounds on a card, and who are really into the high end collectables. And you’ll have the person who’s just trying to master a set.
“Then you’ll have the people like myself who grew up in the ‘90s and like Pokémon, who are really nostalgic about collecting all the vintage. Or, you’ll have grandparents who brought their grandkids, and they’re getting involved in their hobbies.
“There’s such a diverse ecosystem of people that attend the shows.”
The 33-year-old RAF air traffic controller, who lives in Lancaster, has been arranging Card Fest events since November last year.
He has another in the bag for Christmas, and hopes to one day be running ten events each year - “my wife thinks I’m crazy!
“I’m really busy with my full time job anyway, and I do tend to wear myself a bit thin sometimes, when I’m trying to do too much at once.
“But I really enjoy organising events and bringing people together, and bringing the whole process together in the end as well.
“A lot of what we do is actually non-profit in some ways,” Ben continued. “For the Trading Card Game tournament, any money that someone pays to register for a place to compete goes to running the event, the wages for the tournament organiser and judges, and prizes - we don’t see any money from that at all.”
That puts Ben’s team at odds with many other organisers across the UK, which he fears may have made the trading card industry too commodified - and too expensive for genuine fans.
“There’s already over 700 trading card tournaments being advertised for 2027,” he said. “The Pokémon industry is booming at the moment: people are getting back into it, and cards are going for stupid figures.
“People are realising, ‘Oh, I can hire a hall and sit at the tables and charge people £60, £70, £80, and that just goes into my pocket’.”
But also boosting the cost of such days out is a frustrating trend faced by collectors around the world: ‘scalping’, where packs of cards are bought in bulk and resold at exorbitant prices.
It’s the reason trading cards are now largely held behind shop counters, and why buying cards and collectibles online is more expensive now than it seemed in the past.
“[Scalping] really infuriates me,” Ben said. “My son loves Pokémon, and normally, with each set released, we’re quite lucy. But for the 30th anniversary celebrations, we’re still struggling to get a set, because it’s been the most in-demand set in the last few years. Trying to get anything at retail price is really difficult.
“I don’t mind vendors having stuff they come across in their day to day dealings, but what I don’t want to see, which I saw at a show in Manchester a couple of weeks ago, was every vendor having retail display cases of things they’ve gone and bought themselves for two or three times the price.
“I can’t support that side of the industry.”
The value of Pokémon cards has risen roughly 3,261 per cent over the past 20 years.
In September, adult fans celebrating the franchise’s 30th anniversary were seen waiting for hours - even overnight - outside toy shops to buy out stock from stores across the country.
Meanwhile only this week, a retired decorator from Woking brought in £1.5 million after selling his own Pokémon card collection, which he had found forgotten in his attic.
“This is for collectors, it’s for kids, it’s for anyone who has an interest in Pokémon. They should be able to buy something in a shop to open.
“You see it all over the place. They’re buying for the sole reason of selling at a profit. Maybe it’s just because of the times we’re in, where the cost of living has soared, so people are finding other ways of making money.
“I sympathise with people trying to make extra money because times are really hard. But in the same breath, they’ve taken away from a community of people who really care about this game and want to have experiences with their kids. It’s difficult.”
Ben said scalping remained a particular issue in trading card events, and said he had banned the sale of new 30th Pokémon anniversary packs at the event to combat it.
“It all kind of goes in peaks and troughs,” he said. “We always go through periods where there’ll be a really high interest in Pokémon, and then it will wane off, and then it will increase again.
“We do see it especially before Christmas. But I just think that Pokémon is one of the biggest companies in the world, and it’s increasing year on year.
“Do I think it’s ever going to not be an issue? Probably not. But they’ve opened some new printing factories across the world, so it should increase the amount available in the market, and hopefully drive down demand and prices.”
As the Halloween Card Fest comes to a close, Ben and his team are now preparing for their Christmas special in December, which will be held at The Atrium in the University of Lancashire on December 20.
It will be their biggest Card Fest yet, promising more than 60 vendors and 110 tables of cards, collectibles, and activities.
“In December, we’ve got the Christmas Special, which is kind of like a way to give back to the community. There’ll be cheap tickets, and it will be about bringing people together for a final hurrah before Christmas,” he said.
“It’s really great to go around and speak to people and learn all of their stories, and I like to hear what interests them - I think a lot of the time, this is a shared interest.
“It’s wonderful to have a room full of people who, in one way or another, have all got a very shared interest, but in different ways.”