A lifelong hobby.
A new beginning.

My journey with Magic started in secondary school, around 1998. My uncle, Joseph Sin, introduced me to the game when I was in Secondary One. During the school holidays, I helped out at a hobby store along Orchard Road where he worked.

What drew me in was the fantasy world, the complexity of the gameplay, the enjoyment of collecting, and the time spent with other people who shared the same interest.

My first deck was assembled from bits and pieces. I wasn’t a competitive player, and I didn’t have the spending power to buy everything I wanted. I built with what I had.

Several places became part of those early years.

There was World of JJ near Paya Lebar MRT, and the minimart just outside Damai Secondary School, where I regularly bought packs. Then there were the trading gatherings around Bishan MRT—the empty spaces where people would open their albums and turn a small corner into a makeshift marketplace.

Those albums were their storefronts. People gathered to barter, trade and look through one another’s collections. Finding cards meant meeting people, seeing what they had brought, and discovering what you could exchange.

Over the years, my hobby journey also brought me through other trading card games and stores, including TheCardGeeks, Kara Kanojo No Mise (KKNM), Kurocha! and many more.

I took breaks along the way, but trading card games remained a recurring part of my life.

Turning 40 felt like a turning point.

I wanted to prove to myself that I could begin something new—to start from zero and see what I could build. The Sins Vault grew from that decision, drawing on a hobby that had been with me since my school days.

“Sins” comes from our family surname, Sin. It gives the store a name that is personal to me, connecting this new beginning with where I come from.

Singapore’s trading card community is small, and finding stock can sometimes be difficult. Even regular products can be hard to secure, while pre-order allocations may fill before everyone has a chance to purchase.

I hope The Sins Vault can contribute by bringing more stock into Singapore and giving players and collectors another place to look.

We are starting small. As the business develops, my aim is to build the capital and relationships needed to source through official distributors. That is a goal we are working towards, rather than a claim about where we are today.