Quote:
Originally Posted by bmattioli
I'll bet he had some great stuff coming into his store from walk-ins off the street and folks looking to sell. That's the era I wish I had a store..
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By the 1990's though there had already been loads of publicity about the prices vintage cards could fetch. This created unrealistic expectations among the general public with respect to how much their not-nearly-mint "old" cards were worth.
But the mathematics of operating a card shop even in the 1970's and 1980's could be grim. Sure, the proprietor might pay next to nothing for the cards coming in the door but in turn the cards he was selling were fetching only a little something. And he had expenses like rent and salaries including his own.
That's why most card and comic retailing in all but the very biggest cities was done as an adjunct of coin/stamp shops and used book stores. I recall that the first dedicated comic store in my home town of London, Ontario opened in a very low rent outlet on Stanley Street in 1979-80 and still lasted less than a year.
