Different Ways to Evaluate the Strength of the Hobby

Monitoring Hobby Website Traffic

Lately, we've been analyzing the total website visits of some of the hobby’s most frequented websites to gain deeper insights into hobby-based web traffic patterns. Traditionally, when evaluating hobby strength versus weakness, we've primarily relied on online marketplace sales volumes and market cap data.

However, in recent months, we've been expanding our scope to include alternate data points to better align with the direction that we’re taking our website ChasingMajors.com. Website traffic across small, mid-sized, and large hobby sites has emerged as a crucial data point in this endeavor. What really has my interest is when we overlay this data with our classic market cap data that has revealed that web traffic patterns could serve as an early indicator of hobby volatility.

It's logical to anticipate that an uptick in web traffic for specific websites will correlate with increased sales within the sports card market. For collectors and dealers seeking alternative indicators of hobby strength and weakness, this shift in focus is noteworthy. In the coming weeks, I aim to provide our newsletter readers with more advanced reporting on this topic, offering deeper insights into the data. Today, I simply wanted to introduce you to some of the raw data we've been examining.

Hobby Website Traffic

Sports Card Manufacturers

Let's begin by examining the web traffic of card manufacturers. Unsurprisingly, Topp.com leads the pack with 2.2 million site visits in April, breaking its streak of 2 million visits per month since the beginning of 2024. 

This increase in traffic coincides with the start of Topps’ peak release season for baseball cards. The recent launch of 2024 Bowman followed closely to 2024 Topps Heritage, Topps Chrome Black, and a few other releases of lesser popular product lines all of which were released in or around the April timeframe. Topps’ April web traffic increase represented a 7% increase over its average.

Interesting to note, despite Topps Series 1 being one of the key releases of the year back in February, there was no significant increase in Topps website traffic, as it remained flat at 2 million visits from prior months. Could this uptick of 200,000 website visits in April be attributed to recent changes in product distribution to consumers?