Quebec millionaire parlays hockey cards into Ferrari fortune

Luc Poirier, a real estate tycoon in Quebec, sits in one of his 35 ferraris at his warehouse in La Prairie, Quebec. His collection is valued at over $90 million. Photo by Nasuna Stuart-Ulin for Bloomberg

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When Lewis Hamilton races his Ferrari at the Canadian Grand Prix this weekend, Luc Poirier will have more than a passing interest.

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The real estate mogul has one of the largest Ferrari collections in North America — 38 in all — including a prized Daytona SP3, a model that fetched a record US$26 million in a sale last year. He keeps the cars stored in a secret warehouse a few kilometres from the Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve in Montreal, where the Formula One event is held.

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“It’s the one week of the year when my wife and I are going out, we’re all over the place,” said Poirier, who expects to be part of one of the exclusive events hosted by Ferrari NV, the brand he cherishes. “The car is a masterpiece.”

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Poirier, who says he’s amassed a roughly $800 million fortune from real estate and cars, started from humble roots. He got his first taste of the business world swapping hockey cards at age 14. His gambit was trading cards of Quebec-born players like Patrick Roy, adored by teenagers in his Montreal suburb of Longueuil, for English-speaking players like Wayne Gretzky, who commanded a premium as the best player back then.

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“I quickly understood market differentiation, and that there is money to be made from this,” he explained in an interview from his office overlooking his Ferraris, aligned in a rainbow of bright reds, yellows and blues.

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His cards business, which earned him over $60,000, allowed him to set aside enough money at age 16 to buy his first car — a used Porsche 924 Turbo — for about $7,000, even before he got his driver’s license. The car stood out so much in his social housing community that two police officers knocked on his door the same day, assuming it was stolen.

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From cards, Poirier branched out to other ventures and eventually opened a small computer shop selling floppy disks before he turned 20. He later bought the building from his bankrupt landlord for $155,000, launching what would become a lucrative career in real estate. His eponymous firm now runs tens of millions of square feet of land, office space and homes in the Greater Montreal area.

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One of his recent deals was the 2023 sale of an industrial plot of land to Swedish battery manufacturer Northvolt AB for $240 million, which he had purchased about a decade earlier for $20 million with two other partners. Northvolt went bankrupt in 2024.

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“Of all real estate products, land is definitely the most difficult,’’ Poirier said. “It’s impossible or nearly impossible to finance, except with private lenders,” though the risk can produce high returns.

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Poirier, 50, is open about his wealth, which doesn’t always sit well in Quebec, where he has faced criticism, especially online, from people who see him and his car collection as ostentatious.

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Poirier pushes back, often discussing on social media how he built his fortune to “change the mindset — that money isn’t bad.” He’s also given back, supporting charities and institutions with his wife, Isabelle Gauvin, including to an anti-bullying initiative and to HEC Montreal, a French-language business school.