General Forum

Good morning all,

When I moved to Pembroke eighteen months ago, there was a hobby shop, Bill's Stamps Coins and Sportscards. A decent size store with a great location. Time though had clearly passed them by. Bill and Grace couldn’t keep up with the modern card business. I had worked through a business plan to purchase the entire operation in the spring of ’19.

In November ’18 unexpectedly the store closing signs went up. His health was becoming too much of an issue.

Out of the blue, a month ago he called me to see if I would be interested in buying their cards. Ten days ago, I went to their home to discuss and have a deeper look at the inventory. Four hours of going through some of the boxes and binders. That evening we agreed on a price. Yesterday, my son, his brother-in law, and myself picked up the cards and moved them to my house.

1.2 million +/- cards.

An approximate breakdown is 50% hockey, 35% baseball, 15% FB, BSK, and Non-sports. Ranging from 1953 – 2017. Sets, binders, boxes and boxes…

What’s next?

The prospect of me opening another LCS is highly unlikely. It was fun back in the 90’s but I don’t think it is worth the risk vs. leaving the great job I now have.

Preliminary discussion has started to move all the hockey cards out in one lot. Card shows for blowout set sales may be in order. The Ottawa show would be my target. Perhaps December and January.

Here at TCDB, it will be business as usual, sort of. The dilemma going forward with my trade partners will be my current want list. It has a lot on there. But now, I don’t know how much of it is sitting in boxes undiscovered. I don’t want to remove the list. The only work around for the foreseeable future will be that I can only trade, to me, would be 2016 or newer (or cards I am certain that are not part of this acquisition). As I start adding cards to my FS/T list, keep in mind that I can be generous in moving cards out.

I realize this is going to be a problem because not every one of my trade partners will read this nor see the upcoming new messaging on my profile page. With communication we will figure it out.

Thanks for reading and have a great day.

Wow. I love reading these stories about members getting huge boosts to their collections (or "shop" inventories). Good luck with all of them, and I hope you can fill in many holes in your collection! (And maybe a few in mine.)

Going through all those cards and getting them organized will provide so many nice hours, days, weeks and months of enjoyment for You!  Good on You as this is kinda the place I am at, but on smaller scale with about 80k cards that I am currently going through in my early months of retirement  . . .

Yours in The Hobby - Felix

Nice haul! If you find any dupes of Mays, vintage Topps Baseball All-Stars subsets, Meredith, or Mikita in poor to fair condition let me know. I can only dream!

I don't know much about it or how far you are from Buffalo, but if you want to unload the hockey in bulk, maybe Dave and Adam would be an option.  Sometimes they even travel to you to buy collections.

That sounds pretty cool overall though, I wish I'd have the option to buy out a card store.  Shoot at this point I'd be happy just to VISIT a card store.

Congrats on the acquisition! Color me jealous of all the digging you get to do!

Do you have any vintage hockey sets or partial sets (1969 and earlier)?

Congratulations Keri! Those 1.2 millions cards are with the right person.

Congrats !!!!!!!!!!! a collectors dream :)

Congrats and good luck!