Your son loves Pokémon cards. Or baseball cards. He watches YouTubers open packs, talks about “hits” and keeps asking for money for one more box. It looks like a harmless hobby and for many kids it is. But for some, collecting has quietly turned into something closer to gambling.
This week’s panel looked at collecting as a gambling-adjacent behavior: not legally gambling but built on the same mechanics and capable of causing the same harm.
What "gambling adjacent" means
Collecting itself isn’t the problem. The panel was clear on that. The risk comes from how modern collecting is sold.
Today, kids can:
- Rip packs in apps. You swipe to open a digital pack, an animation plays and the card’s dollar value flashes up. You can sell it back instantly to try again or pay to have it shipped. One panellist, a therapist who works with teens, described it simply: it’s a slot machine. Packs start at $1 for Pokémon, around $25 for baseball and $50 for anime cards.
- Buy into live “breaks.” A dealer sells spots in a box of cards, then opens it on a livestream. If your team or player comes out, you get the cards. If not, you may get little or nothing. Then another break starts.
- Buy “personals” Someone opens an entire box for you on stream, one after another, with no natural stopping point.
Add countdown timers, live auctions, chat reactions, scarcity and influencers celebrating huge hits and you have the same cycle we see in gambling: pay, wait, reveal, react, try again.
The same pattern shows up beyond cards, in gacha machines, blind boxes, loot boxes and in-game purchases. And kids can access all of it years before they could open a sportsbook account.
A new language to keep up with
Part of the problem for parents is the vocabulary. Rips, breaks, personals, hits, gacha: there are so many new terms that it’s hard to keep up, let alone see the risks behind them. Even the panel needed to stop and explain what each one meant. And when your child says they’re “just collecting” it’s hard to know what that really involves.
Here’s a quick guide:
- Rip: opening a pack, in a shop or in an app. Digital rips show the card’s value instantly.
- Hit: a rare or valuable card. Case hit and one of one mean the rarest cards in a product.
- Break: buying a spot in a box or case of cards that someone opens on a livestream.
- Personal: paying someone to open a whole box for you on stream.
- Wax: sealed, unopened packs and boxes.
- TCG: trading card game, such as Pokémon, Magic: The Gathering or One Piece.
- Gacha: capsule vending machines with a random collectible inside.
- Blind box: a sealed box where you don’t know which item you’ll get.
- Loot box: a random reward bought inside a video game.
- Microtransaction: a small in-game purchase, like coins or game currency.
The names keep changing, but the mechanics underneath stay the same: you pay before you know what you’ll get. Once you can spot that pattern, you don’t need to know every new term.
The link to gambling addiction
Marc Lefkowitz, a former baseball card shop owner who has worked in the gambling field for more than 30 years, traces his own gambling back to cards. As a kid in 1960s Brooklyn, he flipped baseball cards with friends. Winning wasn’t exciting enough. He needed the uncertainty. At nine, he lost his entire collection on a game of pure luck. “You would think you would never do that again,” he said. It didn’t stop him.
He also warned that some kids carry more risk: those with a family history of gambling, kids who are bullied and kids with ADHD or OCD.
Another therapist on the panel pointed out that 18 to 24-year-olds are already the fastest growing group of gamblers. With loot boxes, rips and microtransactions everywhere, he expects that to grow as today’s kids come of age.
Alyx's story
Alyx Effron is a lifelong collector and a Yankees fan. He’s also in recovery from gambling addiction.
For a long time, he didn’t see his collecting as part of the same pattern. He told himself he wasn’t gambling. He was collecting, like he did as a kid. He was buying something with value. He could always sell it later.
But underneath, the behavior was the same: the anticipation, the chase, spending more than he planned, trying to win back losses and feeling the next box would be the one that changed everything. Personals were where he “went down a slippery slope.” With the next purchase always a click away, there was nothing to make him stop.
When he went to Gamblers Anonymous and talked about breaks and cards, it went over people’s heads. They couldn’t see how baseball cards related to a blackjack hand or a parlay. So he built the space he wished had existed when he was struggling: Collectors MD.
Intentionality vs. compulsion
Collectors MD’s core message is collect with intention, not compulsion. Two kids can open the same pack and spend the same money and have completely different experiences. What matters is the relationship your child has with it.
Collecting with intention Collecting with compulsion Wants a specific card or player Hoping the next pack is “the one” Sticks to a budget set beforehand Limits keep moving Can walk away after a disappointing pull Buys again straight after a loss Still enjoys the hobby without a big hit The chase matters more than the collection Open about what they buy Hides purchases or plays down spending Fits around school, sleep and friends Takes over mood, sleep and relationships Marc puts it in two words: collecting versus chasing. “Collecting is, I want a Michael Jordan card. Chasing is, maybe the next one’s gonna be the big one.”
Questions to ask your child
Don’t tell your child collecting is bad. The teen therapist recalled a boy at a school talk who worried he’d now be mocked for liking Pokémon. Liking a hobby isn’t the problem.
Ask better questions instead:
- Are you collecting cards you love or hoping the next pack has something big?
- If these cards weren’t worth any money, would you still want them?
- Do you really want this card or do you just like the excitement of opening packs?
- When you don’t get a good card, can you stop or do you want to spend more money on another pack?
- Is it still fun when you don’t hit something big?
And watch for the warning signs: hidden purchases, spending money they can’t afford to lose, chasing a bad break, constant thinking about the next opportunity, and relationships or schoolwork being affected.
The gambling industry's playbook
Why does collecting look so much like gambling now? Matt Zarb-Cousin, co-founder of the gambling-blocking app Gamban, argued that the boom in sports betting drove huge investment in making products more addictive. Other industries noticed what worked, and copied it: shopping apps, social media and now collecting.
Alyx agreed with Matt. These platforms have studied the gambling industry’s formula and borrowed it for their user experience. They’re not just reaching collectors, but speculators and people who want to gamble.
That’s why there’s growing scrutiny of the tricks themselves: frictionless buy-again buttons, countdown timers, flashing “hit” animations, instant sell-back, near misses and manufactured scarcity. Unlike regulated gambling sites, most of these platforms offer no self-exclusion, no cooling-off periods and no spending limits.
Where to get support
Collectors MD is a peer support, education and prevention platform for compulsive collecting, overspending and gambling-adjacent behavior. It isn’t anti-hobby. It’s pro-support. It offers:
- Weekly peer support meetings: private, confidential video calls. They have now held more than 70.
- Education for collectors and families, including recovery tools and resources on how these mechanics work.
- A referral network of clinicians, treatment providers, financial counsellors, legal professionals and recovery organizations.
- Daily Reflections, short prompts to help collectors stay intentional.
- Podcasts, including The Collector’s Compass and Behind The Breaks.
- #RipResponsibly, a harm reduction initiative bringing guardrails into breaks, shops and online marketplaces.
- The CMD Foundation, a nonprofit offering free programming and outreach.
For some people, support means setting stronger limits. For others, it means a break, or stepping away completely with clinical help. Find out more at collectorsmd.com or email info@collectorsmd.com.
If your child wants to stop, Gamban blocks access to rip and break platforms on their devices. Right now it’s one of the only ways to put a pause between impulse and purchase.
Start the conversation
Cards have been collected for well over a century and most kids will enjoy them safely. But the environment around them has changed. The question isn’t whether cards are gambling. It’s what behaviors we’re teaching kids before they’re old enough to place a legal bet.
Parents can join our sessions to ask questions and hear from other families. Find out more at stopbettingsports.com.
If someone you love is in crisis or talking about self-harm, call or text 988 (Suicide & Crisis Lifeline) in the US.
Sources
- Xiao, L. Y., Zendle, D., Petrovskaya, E., Nielsen, R. K. L., & Newall, P. (2025). Physical card pack and especially video game loot box spending are both positively correlated with problem gambling but not linked to negative mental health: An international survey. Psychology of Addictive Behaviors. https://doi.org/10.1037/
adb0001082 - Hing, N., Rockloff, M., Russell, A. M. T., Browne, M., Newall, P., Greer, N., King, D. L., & Thorne, H. (2022). Loot box purchasing is linked to problem gambling in adolescents when controlling for monetary gambling participation. Journal of Behavioral Addictions, 11(2), 396–405. https://doi.org/10.1556/2006.
2022.00015 - Collectors MD. About Collectors MD. https://collectorsmd.com/
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