On December 16, 2025, Chedy Hampson will walk across the stage at Onondaga Community College and finally receive a degree he began pursuing more than 30 years ago. After attending Mansfield University, Monroe Community College (MCC), and OCC on three separate occasions, and after years of believing he’d fallen short, an evaluation of his credits revealed he had already completed everything required for an associate degree in Liberal Arts & Sciences: General Studies. For him, the moment is more than ceremonial. “It’s surreal. I made a promise to myself to get a degree. Breaking that promise to go all in on TCGPlayer was a difficult choice, and I am glad to fulfill that promise." The walk across that stage is not a beginning or an ending, but the fulfillment of something he once thought might never come.
That long path to a degree mirrors the winding, unpredictable road of his entrepreneurial life. A lifelong gamer and proud 1992 graduate of Syracuse's Corcoran High School, Hampson grew up on the South Side in the McKinley Park neighborhood. He attended Mansfield University on a baseball scholarship before injuries ended his athletic career, and sent him searching for a new direction. He would attend MCC for a semester, then come home to OCC. Over time, he changed majors from Engineering to Computer Science to Business Administration. They were all fields he would draw from as an entrepreneur.
In 1998, driven by a love of “Magic: The Gathering,” a fantasy-themed trading card game, and the instincts he developed as the world’s #1 ranked player in 1997, he launched the business that would become TCGplayer.com. But the company nearly collapsed along the way due to its early focus on advertising as its only source. Broke, exhausted, and nearly bankrupt, Hampson returned to Syracuse “with his tail between his legs,” putting his belongings in storage and enrolling at OCC for a third time, this time to learn the accounting and business fundamentals he desperately needed. “The last time I went was invaluable,” he recalled. “I needed to understand how to run a business and how to hire for certain skill sets.”
But when TCGplayer suddenly began growing faster than he ever could have imagined, he faced a painful dilemma. He was just a few credits away from a degree, yet every hour spent studying took time away from a business on the edge of either breakthrough or collapse. “If it failed, I’d be left with absolutely nothing,” he told himself. “I needed to take the chance and hold on to what was happening.” For years, the risk hung over him. “Entrepreneurial failure isn’t just losing a job. It’s losing your home you signed over to the bank as collateral, your assets, everything.” Stepping away from school was not giving up. It was survival.
The gamble paid off. In 2014, TCGplayer grew out of his living room and into its first Downtown Syracuse headquarters. A move to the Galleries Building in 2018 solidified it as one of the Tech Corridor’s most dynamic workplaces - an office visible from the street, pulsing with creativity and optimism. The company doubled in size again and again, ultimately employing more than 700 people and becoming a cornerstone of Syracuse’s technology movement. In 2022, Chedy sold TCGplayer to eBay for $295 million, completing one of the most remarkable entrepreneurial journeys in the region’s history. And while the company's footprint has evolved under new ownership, TCGPlayer remains one of Syracuse's largest employers with staff working remotely from home in Sales, Marketing, IT, and Customer Service.
Yet, even after the sale, his focus returned to the community that raised him. He started the South Side Community Growth Foundation with a focus on rebuilding the neighborhood systems - community centers, walkable shops, safe streets - that once shaped his own life. He sees the work like building a product team for an entire neighborhood: mapping data, identifying needs, attracting partners and investors, and creating a feedback loop that brings real resources to families who have stayed. “I benefited from a community that was there. So what would it take to bring back the key resources that support the current neighbors? We are seeing where things take us. This is totally fun!”
When Hampson receives his OCC degree, it will represent far more than credits or coursework. It will symbolize resilience, reinvention, and a promise finally kept. It's a promise that ties together his youth in Syracuse, the collapse and rebirth of a company, and the community he is now helping rebuild. It is proof that the path rarely runs straight, but it can still lead exactly where it was meant to all along.
