Syracuse, N.Y. -- A little-known Syracuse company is turning the dragon-filled worlds of Pokemon and other trading card games into a booming business.

Taking a high-tech approach to a low-tech industry, TCGplayer.com has created an online marketplace for collectible gaming cards. In a world where video games get most of the gaming industry's attention, TCGplayer has cut a niche for itself by becoming both the eBay and Amazon.com of the $1 billion trading card industry.

If you want to buy or sell new or used cards for popular collectible trading card games such as Magic: The Gathering, Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh and HeroClix, chances are you'll use TCGplayer.com's digital marketplace.

The business has generated explosive growth for the company, which opened its first office just two years ago. It doubled its workforce on the 10th floor of Syracuse's State Tower Building, going from 40 to 80 employees, over the past year and is already looking for bigger offices.

Founder and CEO Chedy Hampson estimates the company will create 25 to 50 more jobs in 2016 as it enters the international market.

The rare Black Lotus card in the game Magic: The Gathering sold for $10,000 on TCGplayer.com.

Collectible trading card games first emerged in the early 1990s and generally consist of fantasy battles between wizards, elves, dragons, goblins and other creatures -- all represented on playing cards.

Matches start with each player having their own deck with a set number of cards -- 60 in the case of Magic: The Gathering, the most popular of the games. The decks are shuffled at the start of a game, but players get to choose which of potentially thousands of cards to include in their decks for any given game. Players take turns playing cards to attack opponents or defend against attacks. Matches typically last 20 to 30 minutes.

Unlike video games, the most popular of which are played online between dozens of people who don't usually know each other, trading card games are played face-to-face by two people.

"It's low-tech, but I think that's part of the appeal," said Ray Moore, the company's vice president of product. "You're playing against a real, live person, and a lot of the time that's your friend."

TCGplayer emerged in 2008 from a web design company, Ascension Web Design, that Hampson, 42, a 1992 Corcoran High School graduate, and Moore, 39, of Baldwinsville, started in 1998. The two local men are both avid gaming card players who met at a Magic: The Gathering tournament in Syracuse. (Hampson beat Moore in their game.)

Along with designing websites for other companies, Ascension created several sites geared toward the gaming card industry. In 2002, Hampson reincorporated the company as Ascension Gaming Network and began publishing a monthly magazine featuring articles written by or about some of the country's top gaming card players.

Hampson said he would travel to gaming card competitions in Las Vegas and other cities and pay the top players up to $300 for brief interviews in which they would reveal their winning strategies.

TCGplayer magazine was distributed free at comic book stores and depended on advertising from a handful of game makers. Most of the time, Hampson and Moore published the magazines themselves, working out of their homes.

"I worked in my pajamas sitting on my couch," said Hampson.

Sometimes, revenues were high enough to hire a few employees, who also worked from home. But most of the time, that was not the case. Revenues were spotty at best. Hampson said game makers would advertise only when they had a new game they wanted to promote.

"We tried whatever we could," he said. "It was really difficult. There was no real payoff."

Their websites drew 40,000 visitors a day, but the sites also depended on low advertising revenue. In 2007, that revenue disappeared altogether when major game makers changed their marketing strategies and stopped advertising with TCGplayer.

The cover of TCGplayer.com magazine's October 2005 edition. TCGplayer discontinued the publication in 2006 and two years later launched a digital marketplace for collectible trading card game.

That's when Hampson and Moore decided to go with something entirely different.

The magazine was scrapped and a new website, TCGplayer.com, launched in 2008 as a marketplace for retailers, usually comic book stores, and individuals to buy and sell used gaming cards -- a sort of eBay for the industry.

"We got the idea of a niche marketplace tailored to the games we covered," Hampson said.

The key for TCGplayer is the nature of trading card games. Players can buy new cards in packs, but they don't know which cards are included until they open them. This has created a market for used cards because it allows players to buy the ones they want and sell the ones they don't want.

TCGplayer makes money by taking a commission -- ranging from 2 percent to 10 percent, depending on the product -- on every one of those sales.

Many buyers who once used eBay now use TCGplayer.com almost exclusively because they can instantly see who is selling the cards they want at the lowest prices, Hampson said. And sellers like the site because they only pay a fee when they make a sale, he said.

"We started to attract a lot more visitors," he said. "People were using us to figure out the value of these cards. We became very quickly the price guide for this industry."

Used cards sell for a few cents for common ones to thousands of dollars for rare ones. One of the rarest, the Black Lotus from the game Magic: The Gathering, once sold for $10,000 on TCGplayer.com.

In February 2014, the company, then with 12 employees, moved into its first office -- temporary space on the third floor of the State Tower Building. It moved to a bigger office on the 10th floor a few months later.

In October 2014, the company expanded its business further by buying the most popular cards of Magic: The Gathering in volume and then selling them directly to players.

In this way, the company makes money on its markup and is able to maintain nearly full control over customer service, much like Amazon.com does with the many consumer products it sells. TCGplayer ships up to 500,000 cards a month from its Syracuse office to customers all over the country.

TCGplayer's "warehouse" consists of a 40-by-40-foot area of its office with trays containing millions of cards. The number in its inventory fluctuates based on anticipated demand, seasonality and data from the company's proprietary systems and analytics platforms -- what Hampson calls the company's "secret sauce." In this way, the company limits its stock and the need for warehouse space to the cards it knows it can sell quickly.

TCGplayer's website attracts 200,000 visitors a day and features gaming cards sold by TCGplayer and by about 350 comic book stores and more than 2,000 individuals, Hampson said.

The website includes a price guide showing a seven-day trend in prices for thousands of gaming cards, handy information for buyers searching for the lowest prices.

The site promotes the company's "core values," which give a clue to where management gets some of its inspiration:

Hampson said he's planning an expansion this year. TCGplayer is developing a mobile app and is making plans to enter the international market starting with Canada, the United Kingdom, Japan and Australia.

Hampson won't reveal the company's revenues or profits, but he said its new business model has boosted both substantially. It's also driven a need for more programmers, web designers, marketing personnel, and shipping and receiving workers.

Twenty-five percent of the company's new hires, particularly those in information technology positions, have come from outside the Syracuse area. As part of its recruiting, the company has produced a video that promotes Syracuse as a fun place to live and work.

Employees dress casually at TCGplayer. T-shirts are common. You won't find anyone wearing a tie. Employee perks include a free catered lunch once a month, and unlimited daily snacks and coffee. Benefits include health and dental insurance, a 401(k) retirement plan with matching company contributions and 12 paid vacation days.

The company recently was recognized as one of the 100 best workplaces for women by Fortune.com and the Great Place to Work Institute.

To get to know each employee, Hampson said, he plays one card match a week with a different employee. And he's taking his entire staff on two tour buses for a weekend in New York City later this month.

"It's to show appreciation to my employees," Hampson said. "We have very little turnover here."

The company is rapidly reaching capacity at its 6,000-square-foot office, which it moved into in November 2014. Hampson said the company is going to need 12,000 to 20,000 square feet of space to handle the growth of its workforce over the next two to three years.

The state has approved a $50,000 grant to assist the company with the planned expansion of its office and warehousing space and the purchase of related equipment and furniture. The company is also eligible for up to $200,000 in income tax credits under the state's Excelsior jobs program. Both the grant and the credits are contingent on TCGplayer creating at least 40 new jobs over the next five years.

Hampson said he plans to keep the company in Syracuse, possibly in the State Tower Building if space is available. Building owner Tony Fiorito said he would love to keep the company as a tenant and could provide the space it needs by relocating other tenants within the 21-story building.

Fiorito said TCGplayer is a perfect example of the kind of company that Syracuse could use more of -- a tech firm that has the ability to quickly ramp up its business and workforce.

"They're very talented," he said. "They're great individuals and they definitely have a great business sense."

Contact Rick Moriarty anytime: Email | Twitter | Facebook | 315-470-3148