My 12-Year-Old Self Decided to Open a Card Shop

When people ask me how Beyond Cards & Collectibles came to be, I usually tell them that my 12-year-old self decided to open a card shop.

As a kid, card shops were really special places to me. They were much more than somewhere to buy, sell, and trade cards. They were places to meet new friends of all ages, learn about people from different walks of life, hang out, play pool, or offer to help sort a stack of cards.

They were places of connection.

I remember getting so excited and curious anytime someone walked through the door. It meant I might get to watch someone open packs, or see what gems they had brought in to trade or sell.

I was lucky to grow up around Cotati and Rohnert Park at a time when there were quite a few card shops nearby. I spent countless hours in them.

There was Klaus Hobbies, where Klaus was always incredibly kind to me. I still remember him paying me a quarter apiece for all of my wheat pennies.

There was NorthBay Star Cards, where Ray would find odd jobs for me even though I probably wasn’t technically old enough to be working there. Sometimes that meant helping around the shop; sometimes it meant walking across the street to the gas station to get him a large soda and some beef jerky. His manager, Jack, always seemed to be cooking up some new business idea, whether it involved a few 1986-87 Jordan rookies or posting buy ads for the latest hobby cases through a DOS-prompt-style forum in the days before the World Wide Web.

Across the street was a comic book shop with a card shop in the back, where Papa Murphy’s is now. I spent a lot of time there too, playing pool and helping wherever I could. Eventually I got the chance to work there while the owner (Jerry) was away at Disneyland. I can still remember how proud I was to see my own cards sitting in the display case for sale!

Every once in a while, I’d make the ride over to Mike Clark’s shop, which always seemed to have the most product, and Mike was always incredibly nice to me.

And then there was the chase.

The chase for a Ken Griffey Jr. rookie. Shaq’s Beam Team. The Jordan refractor in the first year of Topps Finest basketball. I still remember those Finest packs being around $7 a pack, which seemed like an enormous amount of money at the time.

I remember how much we dreamed of getting the Ted Williams autograph in Upper Deck baseball, even though the odds were something like 1 in 10,000 packs.

There was nothing quite like wondering what might be inside that next pack.

And then there was Beckett. I remember eagerly waiting for each new issue just so I could flip to my cards and see whether there was an up arrow next to the price. I didn’t know it at the time, but those card shops were also where I first started learning about markets, value, supply and demand.

Looking back, all of those experiences stayed with me.

So in many ways, Beyond Cards & Collectibles is much more than a shop. It’s a bridge back to my childhood, and an opportunity to create some of that same experience for another generation of collectors.

I hope Beyond can be a place where someone discovers their first favorite card, feels the excitement of a great pull, makes a new friend, learns something about collecting, trades stories with someone they might never otherwise have met, or simply hangs out for a while.

I’m incredibly grateful to my wife and son for supporting me in bringing this place to life.

I look forward to meeting all of you, and hearing your stories too.

Elijah
Founder, Beyond Cards & Collectibles