![]() ![]() Mason had more than 3,000 items sent to him for Jefferies to sign. So even a player such as Gregg Jefferies, a solid player but not a superstar, became so popular that Mason had to arrange a second signing. Mason said collectors used the pandemic to comb through their sets and see which signatures they were missing. The pandemic forced the cancellation of in-person events, but the signings he scheduled - collectors would send items to Mason for him to give to players - outpaced the ones he held before the pandemic.Īnd it wasn’t just the stars who have created buzz during the pandemic. Mason tries to schedule an autograph signing once a month, usually bringing a current or former Philly athlete to his shop. » READ MORE: It’s time to change which stats appear on Topps baseball cards I’ll store it away, forget about it, put it back out. Sometimes I’ll put stuff out and it doesn’t sell. They weren’t renting hotels, going on vacations, and buying plane tickets, so they had a lot of disposable income.” They decided to work on their collection. Nobody was allowed in,” said Jim DeCorso, who has owned Media Cards & Sports since 1993. At the beginning of the pandemic, I was locked down. Their fears at the start of the pandemic were for naught. The industry is accustomed to peaks and valleys, but this is a higher peak than local store owners had ever seen. While many industries took a hit during the pandemic, trading cards and memorabilia actually benefited. Packs and boxes became so hard to find that collectors were able to flip them for double or triple the retail price. The trading card industry boomed during the pandemic as collectors rediscovered the hobby or dug even deeper into it while the world was shut down.Ĭards starting moving like stocks as values for rookie cards and rare vintage cards spiked on resale markets such as eBay. Seventeen months later, it has played out better than Mason could have ever imagined. “I didn’t know how this was going to play out.” We’re going to have to close the store for a little bit,’ ” Mason said at his store on Rhawn Street. ![]() “I was sitting here and saying, ‘Man, sports are done. The business grew, eventually moved to its own building next door, and Bill’s Sports Cards and Memorabilia became a mainstay in Northeast Philly.īut the outlook of Mason’s business - and the entire sports card industry - felt a bit dire in March 2020 in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic. He had become enamored with collecting after scoring autographs at Veterans Stadium, and this - hawking packs of cards after he turned 18 in the summer of 1996 - was a chance to turn that passion into profit. Bill Mason started selling baseball cards 25 years ago by carving a small space in his father’s convenience store, hoping to grab the attention of customers as they bought lottery tickets or paid their utility bill. ![]()
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