Hobby Hustle reveals the passion and stakes of card collecting
by Nav Qateel
A documentary by Michael Dault, Hobby Hustle follows three characters that are linked through the hobby of sport card collecting. This hobby, to my surprise, sees some cards go for as high as over twelve million dollars, but that’s for the rarest of the rare. It also attracts the criminal element, which documentarian Dault also covers here.
The first person we’re introduced to is nineteen-year-old Luke Kooy, who is about to start a business trading in sports cards. Along with his dad, Luke also has a YouTube channel where “breaking” packs of sports cards is popular. This popularity gained traction during Covid, due to the fact everyone was stuck at home looking for things to do, and sport card collecting really took off.
Hobby Hustle mainly focuses on two others, with the Cliff Panezich taking up a large part of the two-and-a-half hour runtime. Cliff is a man about to be released from prison after serving six years for forging the signatures of several hundred sports stars. This he could do unbelievably easily without having to reference the originals, and is demonstrated at the very close of the documentary. Cliff would autograph various sports items, like baseballs, hats and of course, sports cards.
Cliff was actually a pro baseball player himself, and after an injury he needed to make a living and went down a path that would see his mother in jail as a way to pressure a confession from him. The story isn’t that simple, and I found his thread one of the more interesting. I couldn’t help notice that Dault didn’t attempt to cover Cliff in a negative light and simply told his side of things with an even hand.
The third person to have his story told is Carl Hench, a man lucky enough to find three-million dollars’ worth of extremely old but immaculate cigarette cards from the early nineteen hundreds in the attic of his family home. Carl and his large family have an equal share in this legendary find, and having him explain how they found then sold the cards was as entertaining as it was inspiring.
We touch on several other passionate collectors in between the main stories, where we learn some of the fundamentals of card collecting. I know nothing about sport cards but I found it fascinating thanks to Dault’s filmmaking skills and how he clearly had a love for the subject he was covering making me care about it too. Hobby Hustle should appeal to anyone, but sport’s fans will get a real kick out of this documentary, as legendary heroes from yesteryear make appearances.
Hobby Hustle is released on Apple TV and Amazon on Feb 16
Nav’s Grade: B
