Sports Card Dealers
Fanatics setting tone for new, interactive card shops that offer a community for collectors
(EDITOR’S NOTE: This is part 2 of a two-part series on new card shops in the hobby. To read Part 1, click here.)
Fanatics took the hobby by storm in late 2021 when it acquired the official licenses for MLB, NFL and NBA cards, along with acquiring Topps and PWCC Marketplace.
Fanatics CEO Michael Rubin has vowed to exponentially grow the hobby and he realizes how much local shops play an important role.
Rubin, his Fanatics Collectibles CEO Michael Mahan and other brass at the company have been randomly stopping by hobby shops recently to speak with owners and collectors.
“We are in shops every week, and our leadership team clearly understands we can’t afford to be detached from what’s working and what’s not,” said Scott Daniel, director of hobby shops for Fanatics Collectibles. “No shop owner should be surprised when a Fanatics leader walks through their door. We want to hear from them, and we need their ideas.”
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Fanatics is striving to get every hobby shop around the country set up with a direct Topps account. Instead of having to go through a distributor, a shop can get product straight from Fanatics to produce higher margins on sales.
According to Daniel, there are over 1,000 card shops in the United States, and about two-thirds of those shops have direct accounts.
“We love every shop that supports the hobby, but in order to prevent market saturation and protect the industry’s value curve we have to be very judicious about expansion, because it does create a pull for production,” Daniel said. “We are currently reviewing data to help us consider options ahead, but we do not yet have a roadmap in place.”
Daniel likes seeing the new, cutting-edge hobby shops that are transforming the industry. He also enjoys the shops that have interactive opportunities for collectors.
“Hobby retail has lagged behind the balance of retail as it relates to shopper experience,” Daniel said. “However, we are seeing that change quickly. Collectors are voting with their dollars and traffic, and they clearly prefer a well-organized, energy-driven experience where collectors want to do more than transact. They want to easily find products and they want a place to hang out, rip and discuss the hobby.
“Fanatics Collectibles is diligently working on tools and strategies that will help our shops meet consumers where they are. If shops can’t keep up, we are fearful their sales will fall behind.”
HOBBY SHOP ADVANTAGE
With so many online options for buying trading cards—including eBay, Amazon or directly from Topps and Panini—collectors don’t necessarily need to set foot in brick-and-mortar hobby shops anymore.
They can just sit in their recliners in sweatpants and peruse cards at 2 a.m.
But there are a number of advantages to walking into a physical store where customers can interact with others and connect with a community feel.
A customer can stop into a hobby shop and leave with product in real time. When someone makes an online purchase, it’s going to take time for the product to arrive.
“It’s like the gambler—you want that fix right then and there,” says longtime collector and dealer Sean McElroy. “Like a lot of people that buy cards, they want to break open the pack or they want to get that card right then and there. You can’t do that if you’re buying off of Amazon or you’re buying off of eBay. You can’t get that quick fix.
“You also have to worry about, is the product going to be shipped properly? Is it going to arrive properly? Is it not going to get lost in the mail? Where going to a card shop you can literally have something right in front of you.”
McElroy has been looking into opening his first hobby shop just outside of Boston for a couple years. He paused those plans late last year, however, when the card market was trending down.
“We’re kind of in a holding pattern to see what happens here,” he said.
McElroy is looking at a 1,700- to 1,800-square foot building around Dedham, Mass. with a business partner who owns three restaurants in the area. He would like to open a shop— which is already named Able & Duncan Collectibles—where collectors can rip packs, host trade nights, have birthday parties and be able to play arcade-type games. McElroy would like a lot of interactive activities available at the shop.
“I have kids and we’re renting a space for the kids’ birthday party and it’s costing us like $400 for like 25 people—it’s like a jumpy hall,” McElroy said. “I’m thinking, if I can set up and get people anywhere from ages 6 to 15, 16 years old and have parties at our place and my business partner has restaurants, so maybe we could bring in food or they could order food and we can bring it into the place. In return, they’d be paying us a fee for hosting the party, so we’d have the guaranteed fee there. Then in return, hopefully, they’d say, ‘Oh, you have a card shop and you’re selling basketball cards.’ And the kids will want to buy some things. Now I’m double-selling them.”
Nate Smith, who has two locations for The Man Cave Card Shop in Michigan, looks at his two hobby shops as a place where collectors can escape for a little while.
“I have a lot of guys that will come into both of our shops and they’ll sit there for an hour or two and just talk sports and not have to worry about what’s going on at work or issues with their kids or whatever,” Smith said. “It’s just a place to go just to escape a little bit. A lot of times it’s just bringing back the memories of a kid and looking through cards you had as a kid and it brings back that nostalgia that’s just fun.”
Sports Card Investor Geoff Wilson, who owns a new hobby shop, HQCards in Atlanta, points to the customer experience angle to bring people into his store. He said that’s true for all retail shops these days no matter what they sell.
“I think that if you’re going to do a retail store of any type, you better have an experience element to it that draws people in, because otherwise they’ll just go online to buy the products,” Wilson said. “I think with card shops, it is easier to have that experience, because people love to trade and they love to rip and they love to show their cards to others and they love to go to card-related events. So there’s already a desire for a community-type feel, and so I think if a shop can really lean into that, really lean into community and really lean into experience, then I think that’s how you can create a successful hobby shop.”
New shop owners are trying to give customers as many reasons as possible to hit their local store.
“It’s like a place where they can come and just hang out and be around like-minded individuals,” says Aaron Amarant, the 21-year-old owner of the new 2,400-square-foot AA Mint Cards in Cooper City, Fla. “Buying online doesn’t offer that same level of community. Some breaking places do a good job of that, but in person is just a whole different ball game.”
AA Mint Cards is implementing an interesting concept that the owners picked up from Burbank Sportscards. The shop has seven jewelry cases—one for each day of the week. Everything AA Mint Cards buys on a Monday, they fill the case with fresh slabs and it’s first-come, first-serve for purchase. When the following Monday comes around, the cards that didn’t sell in the Monday case are taken out and replaced with new slabs purchased that day.
“Each time you come into the store, it’s like you’re visiting a new card store with new inventory,” Aaron Amarant said.
AA Mint Cards also is a group grading submitter to PSA and SGC. The store has an on-site grading concierge.
“They will sit there with you and go through your cards and basically tell you, you should submit these, because you can make money on them, don’t submit these,” says Mark Amarant, his son’s buyer and business advisor. “We act as the speed bump for our customers so that the customers aren’t throwing money away on things that they shouldn’t be.”
CHALLENGES FACING NEW SHOPS
When Smith opened his first The Man Cave Card Shop in 2020, one of the biggest challenges he faced was getting unopened product to sell. That’s still an issue with the addition of his second card shop.
“We’re not direct with Panini and our distributor, we just weren’t getting enough to make it worth our while,” Smith said. “[Former NBA player] Chris [Kaman] was able to get us in direct with Topps, which has been huge. So kind of our ongoing battle has been having stuff in the shop for people to open. Then just having singles—we sell so many singles. We literally have to go out every weekend to keep new stuff in the shop.”
Mark Amarant agrees a card shop can never have too much product. Getting approval for direct accounts with Panini in 2021 and Topps in 2022 has been key for AA Mint Cards. According to Amarant, fewer than 300 stores nationwide have direct accounts with Panini.
“I’ve talked to people, it seems like it’s easier to get from Fanatics than it is to get Panini products,” McElroy said.
For Mark Laird, the owner of Paradise Card Breaks on the Las Vegas strip, an ongoing challenge is the singles market fluctuating so much.
“You have to try and keep inventory relevant, so it’s important to kind of offload some of our inventory that doesn’t move, whether we take that to card shows or we discount it in the store,” Laird said. “The singles market is definitely the biggest challenge, because it’s just dropped so much that you have to be pretty savvy moving cards because you don’t want to take a bath on certain players.”
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Security tops the list of major challenges for the Amarants. In 2022, two masked men with sledgehammers attempted to break into AA Mint Cards at 2 a.m. The assailants were thwarted as they weren’t able to penetrate the front door made of hurricane glass.
That close call on a robbery was a wakeup call.
“We do not open our store without armed security,” Mark Amarant said. “Our store is a jewelry store—instead of gold and diamonds, we have expensive cardboard.”
AA Mint Cards now has 24-hour armed security even though the shop is closed overnight. Spending $7,000 per month for security wasn’t something the Amarants had budgeted for when they first opened their shop, but they want their customers and employees to be safe.
McElroy also points to the security aspect before he opens the doors on his potential shop. He looks at it from a different standpoint; McElroy wants to ensure that he’s hiring honest, reliable people who he can trust to work weekends and not have any issues.
“When you’re dealing in such high-priced collectibles, it’s finding the right people to work for you,” McElroy said.
THE NEW-AGE SHOP
Dealers that are opening brick-and-mortar card shops for the first time in this day and age know they have to offer customers more than just hobby boxes, packs, singles, autographs and memorabilia. A shop has to have unique offers to set themselves apart from other locations.
“It’s the only way to have a card shop moving forward, 100 percent,” Laird said. “I know a lot of old shops are kind of struggling to adapt to that mindset, and it’s a lot of work. I’ve got 18 employees and we run shifts and we have someone there for at least 20 hours a day. It’s a well-oiled machine. I know it’s a lot of work for card shops to do that, but it is the future of the business and if you don’t have some additional way to move product that isn’t through your store, you’re losing an opportunity. I just feel like all card shops should be at least breaking or having multiple avenues to move product, because if you’re not doing it, somebody else will.”
Wilson is hoping his store sets a new standard for how a card shop handles live selling and the experiences that a card shop offers both to people walking into the store and to people who are shopping online.
“I hope that we see a wave of other shops that take what we’re doing and build upon it and put their own spin on it and implement it in their own way,” Wilson said. “I think if that happens then the overall hobby and the hobby shop experience all over the country, all over the world will be better as a result.”
Mark Amarant said new, young blood is what the industry needs to succeed in the future. The hobby needs revitalization and the new shop owners are hoping to lead the way.
“You’re going to find guys like me that came from other businesses and love the hobby,” Amarant said. “That’s where the future is being driven from.”
Wilson believes the cutting-edge, innovative hobby shop will become the norm.
“I think that’s what Fanatics wants,” Wilson said. “They obviously publicly stated they want to 10x the number of collectors in the hobby and they have ambitious growth goals, and I think Fanatics understands and recognizes the importance of the hobby shop, because it is a touchpoint for consumers to experience cards. Shops and shows are the touchpoint for consumers to experience cards.”
New hobby shop owners are striving to give the customer a memorable experience and make them feel like they’ve stepped into a professional, classy, well-designed, futuristic environment.
“I think you’re going to see more and more hobby shops have more modern designs and invest more into the design aesthetic of the shop,” Wilson said. “And, frankly, the ones that don’t, I think they’ll eventually get cut out of being able to get distribution.”
— Greg Bates is a freelance contributor and editor-at-large for Sports Collectors Digest. He can be reached at gregabates@gmail.com.
