Lewis Hamilton opens first Card Culture store

Lewis Hamilton has opened the first Card Culture by Lewis Hamilton store in Frankfurt, launching a trading-card venture he says is built around community as much as commerce.

The Frankfurt site is the first location in a business created through a partnership between Hamilton’s investment company and Dave and Adam’s Card World. It is also intended to be the starting point of a much wider expansion, with further stores already planned across Europe as well as in Australia, the Middle East and Asia.

Hamilton framed the project as an attempt to address what he sees as a major imbalance in the trading-card market. “There are more than 1,000 stores in the U.S., but in other parts of the world there are only a fraction of that,” he said, setting out the gap Card Culture wants to target from its first base in Germany.

That market opportunity is only part of the pitch. Hamilton said he wanted to create “a home for collectors, players and kids who want to feel that excitement of opening packs and being part of a community, and not just a place that sells products.” In that sense, the Frankfurt store is being positioned less as a conventional retail outlet and more as a hub where trading-card fans can gather around the hobby.

The concept reflects Hamilton’s own long-running interest in collecting. He said the idea grew from his childhood experiences with sports cards and from a hobby he has kept into adulthood. Hamilton still owns around 500 high-value Pokémon cards, and his broader collection also includes Formula 1, football, basketball, baseball and Star Wars cards.

That personal link helps explain the shape of the business. Card Culture is meant to combine product sales with events and meetups, giving collectors a place to share, trade and interact rather than simply buy sealed packs off a shelf. Hamilton has described the venture as an attempt to build a broader card culture around those experiences.

By opening in Frankfurt first and laying out plans for more stores across multiple regions, Hamilton is turning a private collecting passion into a global business push. The significance of this first launch is not just the opening of one shop, but the start of an international rollout aimed at younger fans and at markets outside the United States where he believes dedicated card spaces remain scarce.