Introducing Gordy Bonker, and the Gordy Bonker Show

If you know my story, you know that I’ve been documenting my journey building the Bonkers Cards Brand while simultaneously sharing my insights and knowledge of the vintage sports card market since 2022.

So much has happened in that 3 year time period. And today’s announcement marks what I believe to be a turning of the next chapter in this journey.

In just the last 3 years, I went from starting the Bonkers Cards Social Pages and documenting my journey learning about collecting cards, to starting Bonkers Cards LIVE and buying and selling cards, to leaving my corporate job and betting all the chips I had on myself and the brand that I knew deep down I could build.

When I first started Bonkers Cards, I was working full time in NYC as a Managing Consultant for a recruitment firm specializing in the financial services industry. I also had a financial news and career oriented social media brand then, "The Bonker Beat" which aided in building my reputation in that industry. The Bonker Beat covered the job market, the stock market, as well as offered career advice to those interested in financial markets.

I have always had a passion for finance, and the lessons I learned both while working in the industry as a consultant and as a content creator helped build the foundation of what I would later build with Bonkers Cards.

I began to shift a lot of my free time at nights and on weekends to building Bonkers Cards in 2022 and 2023. I began to build a community, and recognized how passionate sports card collectors like myself were about the hobby, and I started to believe I had something.

2 years ago this week in September of 2023, I left my corporate job for a Mental Health disability leave. It would be the second time in the 5 years of my corporate life that I had needed to take a leave of absence for anxiety and depression.

At that time in my life, I had moved several jobs in the corporate world, and felt the pressure that many face in their career of “finding their purpose”. I was experiencing a lot of anxiety over the inner dialogue I was having with myself about what I wanted to do with my life.

To the outside world, I was doing very well. I had a good degree from Penn State, was moving up the ranks at my firm, and was recently engaged to my beautiful wife Amanda.

However deep down I was battling the inner thoughts I had about wanting to go and bet on myself as an entrepreneur. I had a belief that the sports card industry was primed for a massive shift in growth and attention, and I wanted to go all in on building my own personal brand around it.

The thing was - making that jump was incredibly scary.

I don’t come from a family of entrepreneurs.
Not a single one of my friends own their own business.
No one in my circle of friends or family even collected sports cards.

One of the hardest things to think about when looking back on that time of my life was trying not to worry about what others would think of me.

“You’re going to quit your job to sell sports cards?”
”You’re going to make TikToks about old pieces of cardboard?”
”How are you going to pay for your benefits?”
”How do you expect to make any money?”

It would have been much easier to just leave my job or go find another one.

But thankfully I had an incredibly supportive wife who believed in me, and encouraged me to bet on myself.

I found a therapist who helped guide me in how to manage how I talked to myself and thought about what other people thought of me.

I let go a lot of the things that I was so hard on myself for.

And I left my job.

Now flash forward 2 years later and we are here.

As it stands I have over 30,000 followers across my platforms. I have posted thousands of videos helping further educate and promote the sports card hobby. I’ve traveled the country to all of it’s biggest card shows and met collectors, investors, entrepreneurs, and everyone in between.

I started the Bonkers Cards Club, a vintage sports card community that allows for vintage card collectors to meet one another and learn more about the hobby. We have 136 members as of today.

I started the Bonkers Cards Weekly Newsletter and have crossed over 2,000 weekly readers. My original goal was just to write 1 blog a week.

This marks my 187th blog post.

And as my content grew - so did my card business.

To start this year I bought and sold a high grade 1952 Master Set for $300,000. After that story and that sale, it changed the trajectory of what I believed I could sell with my platform.

I’ve since had the opportunity to broker and sell some of the most historic cards in the history of the hobby. (Including Mickey Mantle’s personally owned ‘52 Mantle)

My TikTok show, Bonkers Cards LIVE now has a presenting sponsor in Greg Morris Cards, one of the largest sports card consignors in the world. It’s become the meeting place for my community to gather and talk about cards, as well as to add cards to their collections. My LIVE show consistently gets tens of thousands of viewers a month.

What started as a small passion project has turned into its own media brand.

Which leads me to today’s announcement.

I am excited to share that I have joined Collectibles OnSI and the Sports Cards Nonsense Media Network to launch my own weekly Podcast, “The Gordy Bonker Show”. I am thrilled to bring even more unique content to collectors and investors with the added reach these platforms provide. Not only will I be recording the new weekly series, but I will also be writing features for Collectibles OnSI, and participating in the network’s other shows and bringing new ideas to life

The show will air once a week, and be focused on vintage sports cards both related to their relevance as collectibles and as alternative assets. The show will be published to the Sports Card Nonsense YouTube channel, and will air clips both on Bonkers Cards and SCN media channels.

This marks a massive milestone for me in the evolution of the Bonkers Brand. Collectibles OnSI and SCN both have a long-standing history in the hobby, and the opportunity to continue to build meaningful and valuable content within the industry is something I am incredibly grateful for.

I was fortunate to meet Mike Gioseffi, host and founder of the Sports Card Nonsense podcast earlier this year when he invited me on to the show, and following the episode we had a really strong audience reaction.

It was clear to me that the community that SCN has built was not only large in size, but passionate as well.

Following that interview appearance, Mike and I kept in touch. As the National rolled around, him and I scheduled some time to collaborate on some content, and that is where I had the opportunity to meet his business partner Jeremy Aisenberg.

Jeremy spent nearly two decades at Octagon, one of the world’s leading sports and entertainment agencies, where he built platforms for sports and social media talent including names such as Hank Haney, Paige Spiranac, Geoff Shackelford, Michael Breed, and Matt Ginella. In 2024 Jeremy left Octagon in launching his own ventures in collectibles and creator media, now as a co-founder for Hobby Solutions Inc.

After meeting Jeremy at the National and learning more about his vision for the Collectibles OnSI and SCN media brands, we began to talk about what a Bonkers Cards affiliated show would look like on the Network.

I expressed to Jeremy that I believe that there is a massive demand right now for content aimed at collectors AND investors talking about VINTAGE sports cards as a collectible and as an asset class.

The majority of the hobby content that is out there right now aims at showing flashy modern cards, and the quick flips at card shows. I enjoy watching that content as well - but I believe there is a huge gap in the market as it stands for someone to be the voice behind the importance of the history of vintage cards and their potential appreciation in this rising and exciting collectibles market.

I also want the show to allow for my audience to get to know me personally.

I am naming the show the “Gordy Bonker Show” because I want it to be an amplification of my personal brand. I will spend time talking about things that interest or inspire me personally on top of the hobby content.

I will talk about entrepreneurship, baseball history, the stock market, and most definitely some golf talk.

I hope to have guests on my show that will help further educate and better my audience, and challenge them to think about things they may not have before.

I plan on the solo episodes to be about a half hour in length, but I am open to the idea that the show may change over time.

I will continue to write content on my newsletter here and plan on also contributing to the Collectibles OnSI website (https://www.si.com/collectibles.)

I will also continue to host my current LIVE show on TikTok, Bonkers Cards LIVE, every Sunday night at 8:00pm est. which has become the backbone to my community and Bonkers Cards Brand.

I want to thank everyone at Collectibles OnSI and SCN Media group for their belief in me and what the Bonkers Brand can and will become.

I also want to thank everyone in the Bonkers Cards Community for their support over these last few years.

What’s made this journey so meaningful is that my audience and community have been along watching me grow every step of the way. So the big wins like this truthfully feel like a team effort.

Our first episode of the Gordy Bonker Podcast will air this month and you can catch it on the Sports Cards Nonsense YouTube Channel.

You can follow me on the below channels, to keep up to date with all the content from the show and more from me on my personal accounts documenting the vintage sports card market.

Bonkerscards on Instagram
Bonkerscards on TikTok
Bonkerscards on YouTube
Bonkerscards on Facebook

And subscribe to the Bonkers Cards Newsletter for more of weekly emails covering all things vintage!

Bonkers Cards Newsletter