Hue and Cry
Paint Sample Card Collecting has Retailers Seeing Red
by Claude Pantone, Staff Writer
June 10, 2024 at 7:00 a.m. EDT
Major paint retailers and outlets have begun to place color sample cards under glass in response to an explosion of their popularity among teens and collectors. In the first half of 2024 alone, over 3.2 million color cards have disappeared from paint stores and departments across the United States and Europe. Their popularity among colorisseurs, hueganauts and disenchanted Yu-Gi-Oh! players has driven a level of acquisition and circulation not seen since the 1987 height of the Richard Simmons Deal-A-Meal frenzy.
Van Dyke Brown, self-described latexfile and author of Paint by Dumber: The Coating Industry’s Dangerous Flirtation with Vinyl Siding, describes the trend as, “deliciously intriguing.” In a 2021 New York Times op-ed, Brown predicted the potential for sample cards, with their lavish colors and tactile appeal, to become, “the Bitcoin, the NFT’s — even the FTX of interior design.” They have since outpaced Magic cards, Pokémon cards and 1962 Mets cards in both online trading activity and exponential growth in value.
Brown pointed to Valspar’s signature Southwest series of paints as a textbook example of a product, and the samples for it, leveraging each other. “Most of the paints in this series are luscious,” Brown explains. “El Dorado is like a Sonoran sunset, with its rich blend of burnt umber and actual gold leaf that has to be mixed under guard at the Home Depot.”
But El Dorito, a blend of international orange and Red 40, was a dud — until Valspar shrewdly discontinued it and withdrew all samples from circulation. “Sample values soared,” said Brown, “with Valspar making more from its sample holdings than it ever did from the paint.” El Dorito sample cards in good condition now fetch as much as $1200 on eBay, or $17 on Craigslist.
Other paint sample cards are sought for more than just their color. The evocative phrases included on the back of select cards have served to increase their collectability. The Sherwin Williams Banalna card contained an accidental haiku that has nearly tripled its value.
Critics, and others who are just critically inclined, are circumspect about the actual value of sample cards. They trace the birth of the trend back to Brown’s own prediction of it in the Times, and point to the skyrocketing total worth of Brown’s personal paint card collection — in particular his holdings of the rare and highly valued Bejamin Moore ‘Scottish Tartan’, which dries to a plaid finish.
“It’s not like I bought up all the toilet paper in town and then warned everyone that we’d run out of toilet paper,” Brown snapped in a 2023 NPR profile. When confronted today with early covid-era security footage of Brown at a Walmart checkout with a pallet jack full of Charmin, he was more forthcoming. “Ok, yes, that was me — but this is different. Sure, people horde these cards, they get distracted by the drama and anxious about the scarcity of them — but that’s not where the value is. These cards are soooo beautiful! Just look at the gorgeous blue in this Chicory Flower card. And it’s only $1500! Now don’t tell me that’s not a trickery cheat — er, um, chicory treat. Chicory treat! I meant chicory treat!”
Brown’s repeated requests to redact his comment for this article were declined.
EDITOR’S UPDATE 6/26/24: Following the Washington Post’s reprint of Van Dyke Brown’s misstatement, paint sample values plummeted. Brown has been subpoenaed to testify before the Obscurities and Exchange Commission, and Bravo has cancelled their landmark series profiling the lifestyles of sample collectors, ‘The Cardashians’.
