From Snooker to Pokémon Cards: Why Male Hobbies Are Making a Comeback

Master Q Snooker, Billards & Lounge in Toronto

I was chatting with my brother the other day after checking out a car show together, and he mentioned he's picking up snooker again.

We learned to play snooker as kids in Hong Kong — and I'm not joking, I was barely tall enough to reach the table. I remember our dad taking us to the billiard hall situated in the lower level of our condo complex. Back then it just seemed completely normal for a 6 to 8 year old to be playing snooker. It was part of life in Hong Kong — partly because of the British influence on the city, partly because billiard halls showed up constantly in Hong Kong movies and became embedded in the culture.

My brother says snooker is gaining popularity again — significantly so in China. And I mentioned I'd just watched a C-drama called Amidst a Snowstorm of Love which is centred around snooker and 9-ball players. Funny how these things circle back.

That conversation got me thinking — beyond sports and cars, what are the most popular male hobbies right now? Especially the affordable ones. I'm not talking about watch collecting or anything like that — I have a friend who collects pens, and that turned out to be far more expensive than I ever imagined.

Video Games — The Obvious One

Video games are a no-brainer. I grew up when Nintendo and Sega first arrived, and the industry has grown beyond recognition since then — and that was all before everything moved online. I've read that the video game industry is now 5 to 10 times larger than the movie industry. That's enormous.

Beyond my early days of Nintendo and Street Fighter 2 at the arcade, I'm still very much in it. As I wrote in my Basketball Is Life post, I play NBA2K basically every night 😂

For adult men specifically, I think the variety of games being played is wider than people assume.

I used to play FPS (first person shooter) games like Call of Duty online — was never great at it, those impossibly fast snipers always got me. I tried the mobile version recently though, and found it's actually perfect for those moments when you're waiting in your car. Still pretty decent at it 😂

Sports games beyond NBA2K are obviously popular too — Madden for American football, FIFA or EA FC for soccer, the list goes on.

The last genre I've gotten into is third person combat games — from the God of War series, which leans more into adventure and storytelling, to Black Myth: Wukong, which is more "soulslike" — essentially a gauntlet of tough, creative boss fights. Both are more demanding than people give them credit for. The number of times I had to completely rethink my approach to a Wukong boss was genuinely humbling.

Black Myth: Wukong

What made Black Myth: Wukong especially meaningful to me is that it was developed by a Chinese studio — and the game draws directly from the classic Chinese mythology I grew up with. For a Chinese Canadian who knows the Wukong stories, playing it hit differently than just another action game. It was cultural immersion through a controller.

I know the younger generation plays entirely different types of games now. I've accepted I can't keep up — and I'm at peace with that 😂

Collectibles — Way Beyond Sports Cards

Michael Jordan Skybox card

I grew up collecting sports cards — all four major sports, though the real focus was baseball and hockey until Skybox launched into basketball. And yes, that Skybox Michael Jordan card should be immediately recognizable to anyone who collected basketball cards in that era — even if it's not worth much now.

I went to every card show I could find, from small mall setups to the big regional ones. And I tracked the value of everything through Beckett magazine — which I bought every single month it came out.

Since COVID, the sports card market exploded. Grading companies got heavily involved, and a former co-worker of mine got deep into buying and selling cards like a stock portfolio. I looked into getting back into it for the nostalgia alone — but the scene has changed too much. The wait times for grading, the 1-of-1 ultra-rare cards, the sheer complexity of it all — it's not the collecting I grew up with, where you bought a pack, tore it open, and hoped for something great.

Collectibles have also expanded well beyond sports. Pokémon cards are the obvious example — serious money is changing hands for rare ones. I see my nephews with their collections, but I've also heard of people exchanging significant sums for single cards. It's a legitimate market now.

I still find it interesting though. I may need to dig into that large bin in my basement and see what I've actually got sitting in there.

Vintage Hobbies Are Making a Comeback

Back to snooker for a moment. In our conversation, my brother mentioned he frequents the same billiard hall I recently visited with friends — though we went for 8-ball pool rather than snooker. We were both surprised by how packed the place was. My brother says it's jammed from the moment the doors open during the day. When I went, every snooker table was taken, while the pool tables had more of a casual in-and-out energy.

I found myself curious about why, so I did a bit of reading.

Beyond the rising popularity in East Asian communities and China, there's a broader cultural shift happening — a genuine movement toward "analog" and hands-on hobbies. I've always told my kids that fashion cycles around. It seems hobbies do too — just for different reasons.

Bridge, chess, mahjong. Film photography — though I'm still waiting for Costco to bring back photo printing from camera film 😂. Model building — Gundam especially seems to be having a real moment. They're all coming back.

And I genuinely hope karaoke makes a full comeback too — especially the old-school open room format where you had to wait for the laser disc to load before you could sing. There was something about that shared waiting and anticipation that made it special 😂

What I appreciate most about this analog revival is that it pulls people away from their phones and back toward each other. When I went out to play pool with my friends, it had been a long time since we'd done something like that. One of them told me afterward it was exactly what he needed — and we didn't even plan it. We just went.

That's what good hobbies do.

So what hobbies are you into these days? And do you think the analog trend is part of why vintage hobbies are making a comeback? Drop it in the comments below.