What Is CardsHQ?

CardsHQ opened on February 1, 2024 at 3101 Cobb Parkway in Atlanta, Georgia, founded by Geoff Wilson (of Sports Card Investor) alongside local card-shop operators Ryan Van Oost and Carter Musgrave, on a reported $3 million buildout. Local coverage at the time called it the world’s largest card shop: 14,000 square feet of retail floor, streaming studio space, and dedicated box break bays, selling both sports cards and Pokemon/TCG product. It isn’t a website-first business -- the retail floor and the live-break broadcasts running out of it are the core of what CardsHQ is.

• Retail storefront— sealed wax, singles, supplies, and Pokemon/TCG product sold on-site in Atlanta, plus e-commerce through cardshq.com for anyone not local.
• Live box breaks— CardsHQ runs breaks on Whatnot broadcast from its studio space, the same live-shopping format covered in What Is a Sports Card Group Break and What Is Whatnot.
• PSA Submission Center— an in-store PSA team accepts grading submissions directly on-site, sparing walk-in customers the separate mail-in step covered in How to Submit Cards for Grading.
• Trade nights and events— in-person trading events at the shop, including broadcast “Trade Night” sessions built around live card-for-card swaps.
• Market Movers— a pricing and collection- tracking tool tied into the CardsHQ/Sports Card Investor ecosystem, in the same category as Card Ladder or 130Point.

On June 1, 2026, CardsHQ and Sports Card Investor announced a strategic growth investment led by Shamrock Capital alongside EnOne Ventures, merging the two into a single company operating under the CardsHQ name. The combined entity spans retail, e-commerce, live breaking, content, and data/technology -- including the Sports Card Investor media network and the Market Movers platform -- and the release described it as the largest commerce, media, and technology platform in the sports card and TCG space. The funding is earmarked for national retail expansion, with CardsHQ’s next physical location expected later in 2026 and additional flagship stores planned in other major markets.

Before the 2026 merger, Sports Card Investor was the media and data brand -- app, YouTube channel, newsletter -- and CardsHQ was the physical retail and breaking operation Wilson opened alongside it, with the SCI studio simply relocated inside the shop. That distinction still matters for understanding what each name actually refers to: SCI is content and comp data you consume remotely, while CardsHQ is a place you can walk into, watch a break happen live, hand a card to a PSA rep in person, or trade face to face. Post-merger, both operate under one company, but the retail/breaking business and the media/data business remain functionally separate products under that shared roof.

Confirm the exact card with Identify & Research — free-path first (on-device OCR, catalog match, and fingerprints). For the media and data side of the business see What Is Sports Card Investor, for how live-format box breaks work generally see What Is a Sports Card Group Break, and for grading logistics see How to Submit Cards for Grading.