For the past year and a half I have been a customer at Big D's Card Shop in Raleigh, North Carolina. I found the store in late 2013 and have made dozens of trips into the store which have been the subject of numerous posts on this blog. Recently the customers at Big D's learned that Jimmy, the owner of the store, was going to be closing the store this month. After moving here in 2005 it took a long time to find a cool card shop. There is a store in a shopping mall in Cary and another one way way out in the middle of nowhere, but none of them could touch Big D's.
Jimmy ran a great shop. He had cool cards and was always on the lookout for his customers too. I cannot tell you how many times I would get to a break in the middle of the day and find a message from Jimmy about a card he saw that would fit my collection. It's mentioned in every post about Big D's. Beyond finding cards, Big D's was a great place to met other collectors, or bust open a box of cards. It was a great place to met other collectors too.
After school this week I decided to take one last trip into Big D's to pick up a cool Chris Archer card and a jumbo box of 2015 Topps cards. I will put the 2015 Topps box up later in this weekend. Here's the Archer card.....
This Archer card is from the 2014 Topps Supreme set and is one of just 10 copies of the card. I believe this is the gold parallel of his base autograph. The card looks to have a pinkish background, but I believe the parallel color on the Supreme cards was determined by the foil color. Aren't they all gold? While I am confused by the parallel and foil colors of these cards, it is just a really cool card.
It was a great trip into the card shop. I spent a good chunk of time sitting in the store opening my jumbo box of Topps and talking baseball with Jimmy. These times will be missed, but I am still looking forward to talking cards with Jimmy at card shows and breaking open some boxes with some of the collectors who frequented the shop. It was a great run, thanks to Jimmy for running a great business.
It's always sad to hear about a card shop closing, especially when it was as good as this one sounds. I'm so thankful that there are regular card shows in my area, the shops that are still around can be a little out of the way for me to get to.
ReplyDeleteWe have card shows in Raleigh, but I am not always great about attending. I need to do better with getting the shows on my calendar.
DeleteI hate hearing about great card stores closing their doors. I had one place I loved going to and they closed as well. Been looking for a regular card store ever since.
ReplyDeleteI have a feeling that I am going to go through a long period of searching now too. There are a few other card shops around North Carolina, might have to make some small road trips and check them out.
DeleteIf you do not mind, could you post the name of any shops that you locate? We are now down to one that I am aware of in the Triad area of North Carolina. There is a small card shop at The Cards at the Cages on High Point Road. There was another one in Clemmons, NC but they just closed at the end of this month.
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