E & E Card Shop -Rolesville, North Carolina

I have lived in and around the Raleigh-Durham area now going on eight years.  During that time I have not found a card shop that I would call my own.  During the past year or so of blogging I have posted a few things about card shops around St. Louis during a trip back last spring, but basically nothing from my hometown.  There used to be one in Durham, but that closed a few years back.  There was another one that I visited a few months ago, but that apparently closed.  It's pretty surprising that a place like Raleigh, or Durham, or Chapel Hill would be devoid of a decent card shop, but that's one of my biggest predicaments in collecting.

Currently, I am working on finishing up leg one of my reorganization project, update this week along with a few set posts, when they need became urgent for me to buy a few new boxes.  I could have ordered them online and waited a few days, but I share my house with a two year old, so time was not on my side.  I decided to be bold and check out my local options and stumbled upon a listing for a card shop in Rolesville, North Carolina which is in the northeastern part of Wake County, on the other side of Raleigh, from my hometown of Apex.

I hoped in my car and drove up to the store managing not to get too lost.  I might have circled the Food Lion in Rolesville a few times, but nothing too bad.  The shop, the E & E card shop is a quaint store along Main Street in Rolesville.  Like many of the towns in central North Carolina, Rolesville had been a quiet little southern town that is slowly being swallowed up by a city.  In this case Rolesville is sandwiched in between Wake Forest and Raleigh.

I entered the store, which is run and owned by two brothers who were both in store working, and specializes in sports cards and NASCAR.  They have two walls of cards and a large wall of NASCAR stuff, we are in North Carolina, and another wall with miscellaneous non-sport cards and trinkets.  Overall, a really nice environment for cards and the owners were really helpful.  My favorite part of the store was the wax wall behind the front counter.

The owners had a nice selection of newer boxes at good prices, but they also had some great old wax.  It's cool to sit in a card shop see boxes of newer products like Topps Series 2 and the Panini USA Baseball boxes then look up a shelf and see a box of 1995 Flair stuck in between a 1997 Fleer Ultra box and a bunch of old 90s Pacific boxes.  Really cool.

The other card wall is filled with factory and hand collated sets.  Again, like the Wax Wall, there were plenty of cool sets stuck in among the normal sights and sounds of a big lot of factory sets.  Best of all, while waiting to be checked out, one of the owners took a few minutes to show me around the back room of the store where they had a whole store room of old sets, 70s, 80s, and 90s Topps to large 3,000 and 5,000 count singles boxes of commons and even more old wax.

So, beyond my boxes for my project I did snag a factory set of 2010 Topps USA Baseball cards.  I left it sealed of course, but I already owned a few of the base cards I had bought as singles.  George Springer is scanned and pictured below.  Definitely a set that flies under the radar with lots of good names...

2010 Topps USA Baseball George Springer

I did not take pictures of the shop today since it was my first time there, normally does not stop me, but I had the feeling I should pass on the pictures for today.  It is nice to find a good card shop in the area, sort of, after years of not having a good card shop near me.  I will be making a return trip to the E & E card shop again soon and will be picking up something cool, probably some old wax, to share in this space.