As sophomore Max Atlas starts up his livestream, the customers begin to flow in.
Atlas digs his hand into a pale cardboard crate on the floor, packed full of valuable sports cards. Atlas grabs a soccer trading card of rookie Cole Palmer; he puts it on his messy desk, dirtied by a multicolored arrangement of sports cards.
He shows the card to his audience.
The bids come rolling in.
$5... $10... $20... $25, sold!
He reaches down and grabs another. The cycle repeats.
This is how Atlas makes his money. Unlike a traditional job, he profits off of what he loves — sports cards.
Before selling his own sports cards, Atlas discovered his love of collecting them after being gifted $10 worth of credit for the app Whatnot — a digital marketplace where vendors sell collectibles on a livestream.
That was in December 2024. Now, just two years later, Atlas has his own collection of about 750 sports cards, 500 for sale and 250 for himself.
The first card Atlas ever bought from the platform was a near-mint Lionel Messi card for around $24, $10 of it being paid for with the credit. After that, he began to cultivate his own sports card collection.
“I got onto [Whatnot] and found something cool,” Atlas said. “And I was like, ‘Oh, wait, these are kind of awesome. Maybe I'll keep buying them,’ and I kept buying and buying them. It’s kind of spiraled from there.”
But, Atlas faced the headache many collectors do; his collection was growing too quickly, and he began to lack the funds to support it.
He needed to find a way to make money.
“I realized that I needed to make this sustainable to let me keep buying [trading cards], and to do that, I had to start a business somehow, so I ended up going into buying and selling cards that people want to be able to afford [trading cards] for myself,” Atlas said.
With his new plan in mind, Atlas began to sell his own cards on Whatnot in June of 2025.
Unfortunately for Atlas, business got off on a rough start.
“[The] first couple months, I had no idea how to get an audience for this kind of stuff,” Atlas said.
To find more customers, he had to change his approach, adapting the bulk of his collection from football to soccer cards.
“When I switched to soccer, I got a foothold because I have more knowledge of soccer than football,” Atlas said.
With soccer cards, Atlas has been able to find that audience he needed to keep his collection alive, and they’ve blessed him with a significant increase in sales.
“Something just clicked, I don't know,” Atlas said. “I had like three back-to-back [streams] that were just great.”
Atlas attributes much of his success to the community he's built through livestreams, with customers from previous shows returning to buy from him.
“I started kind of being consistent with when I would do [streams], when I would get stuff, and I'd have people who would come back and buy for me over and over and over again,” Atlas said.
Atlas averages around 25 constant viewers per livestream.
Atlas’ has also been able to build personal connections with his community on Whatnot.
“There are a lot of people I've met, either through Whatnot, or in person, that I can go back to and talk [to],” Atlas said. “I'd say I've made friends through Whatnot, honestly. There are people I'll talk to on a regular basis.”
The people in his community are of all ages and come from places across the country.
“I talk to people [on Whatnot] who are in their 80s, and I've talked to people who are like 6,” Atlas said.
Still, many people in his community are locals to the Kansas City area. Atlas recalls a time when a vendor that Atlas had bought a card from was working near Atlas’ house, so the seller decided to stop by his home and deliver the package to his front door.
But not everyone who knows about Atlas’ collection is from Whatnot. Atlas’ friend freshman Landon Ferrel gifted Atlas a Duván Zapata autographed soccer card before Atlas began his collecting journey.
“I gave [Atlas] a card over a year ago, [and] we’ve been collecting our favorite players since then,” Ferrel said.
Similar to Atlas, Ferrel buys and sells cards on Whatnot. He has been able to build up a community online, just like Atlas has.
Although both Atlas and Ferrel buy and sell on Whatnot, Atlas will also go to in-person events in the area. The most recent event was a trading card show at the Pavilion at John Knox Village in Lee’s Summit. Atlas came back with a haul of 20 new cards.
Even though Atlas is planning to use the money from his business to buy his first car, the profits aren't his favorite part about collecting. It’s when he gets his hands on something he’s been looking to obtain for a long time.
Atlas currently has his eyes on a new Messi autographed card that will run him around $600.
And to earn it he won’t begrudgingly clock in to a job he hates. He’ll do it surrounded by what he loves, sports cards.
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