Industry Spotlight

For Kunal Ahuja, a childhood interest in sports cards has grown into a business connecting collectors, fans and investors.

As the founder and CEO of Sports Card Invest, Ahuja works at the intersection of sports media, collectibles and alternative investments. He founded the company in 2020 and oversees a sports card investment fund alongside its growing media presence.

His ambition is to expand the reach of sports cards, using sports coverage, athlete interactions and market analysis to introduce new audiences to the hobby.

From Giants fan to entrepreneur

Ahuja's connection to collecting began in the San Francisco Bay Area. In a November 2025 interview with Ryan Alford on Collector Nation, he traced his early interest to the San Francisco Giants' championship years of 2010, 2012 and 2014. He returned to the hobby in 2019 with an entrepreneurial outlook shaped in part by growing up in Silicon Valley.

A Yahoo Sports profile from October 2020 adds a revealing detail: before cards, Ahuja was reselling sneakers. A friend's experience buying and selling cards prompted him to redirect his money into the hobby. "I sold off every shoe I had and put all that money into cards," he told the outlet.

At the time, Yahoo reported that he had bought cards of more than 100 players, looking to sell into attention generated by strong performances. It was an early lesson in how closely sports news and collector demand could move together.

By 2020, he was building a business while still a teenager. In an August interview with LatestLY, Ahuja described himself as an 18-year-old college student whose interest in entrepreneurship had developed during high school. Sports cards gave him a way to combine that interest with his knowledge of sports.

Building an audience, one post at a time

The audience did not arrive overnight. Ahuja told LatestLY that he had published roughly 500 posts before gaining traction, sometimes producing eight to ten posts a day even when relatively few people were watching.

His early business centered on a subscription program offering weekly sports card research reports. During his college summer break, he described spending six to ten hours a day creating content, researching the market and processing membership orders, sometimes handling those responsibilities while speaking with sponsors.

That account adds a practical dimension to his entrepreneurial beginnings: building Sports Card Invest meant learning to manage the daily demands of both a media platform and a service business.

Connecting content and collecting

Today, Sports Card Invest combines card sales, advisory services, consignment and card sourcing with free videos and market commentary. Its website reports more than 100,000 followers across Instagram and YouTube, giving the company an audience for both its content and collecting services.

The services now extend beyond research reports. The company describes direct advisory calls with Kunal and his team, help locating specific cards and a concierge service that researches comparable sales and negotiates with owners. That makes the business a bridge between following the market and completing a purchase.

Learning from a changing market

Speaking with Alford in 2025, Ahuja described the pandemic boom, the slowdown that followed and what he viewed at the time as a more measured recovery. He emphasized watching shifts in attention and looking beyond immediate hype.

He also stressed the importance of keeping affordable products available to children and newcomers. That concern connects directly to his broader ambition: expanding the hobby requires giving new collectors an accessible place to start.

His podcast archive illustrates the range of his commentary, from individual players and unopened boxes to concerns about overproduction. Those subjects connect what happens on the field with decisions collectors face in the marketplace.

Why Kunal Ahuja matters to the card industry

Ahuja's approach reflects the growing overlap between collecting, sports entertainment and market education. Sports Card Invest gives audiences several ways to engage, whether they are following commentary, learning about cards, building a collection or seeking help buying and selling.

His path also illustrates how a young entrepreneur can turn sports knowledge and consistent content creation into a business. The work began with research reports, frequent posts and the daily responsibilities of serving members. Those efforts laid the foundation for a platform with a broader role in the hobby.

For Ahuja, the next chapter centers on bringing more people into collecting - and keeping the connection to sports that drew him to cards in the first place.