I think if you have a brick and mortar card shop these days and you're not using it as a front for eBay or card breaks or have a verrrrrry loyal customer base, you may definitely be out of the loop on how people value vintage vs. modern.
Vintage collectors know what they want. There's no randomness to vintage. No pack-pulling hoping for a '52 Mantle and no hoping for some kind of '52 Mantle 1/1 Superfractor Auto. Most vintage collectors set a goal toward a player, a set, or a specific card and either save money to buy it via eBay or major auction house, or buy singles via eBay. Most of the time they want it graded. Occasionally if they are looking for commons to build a set, they'll go to a large card show (pre-Covid) but they know their specific needs are almost always never going to show up in some random picked over card store. Wandering into a brick and mortar store, they are more likely to find overpriced, ungraded singles that are "easier" to find on eBay.
Vintage collectors tend to be older yes, but I've seen many collectors my age (35) who have been around the hobby long enough get bored with the newer cards and start investing/chasing vintage. Who knows if vintage will increase forever, but it has shown to be a fairly safe investment vs. always chasing the next Trout on a SSSP card.
Card stores that don't stay up on the latest trends and cater to the modern clientele with breaks, high end new releases etc are the ones that tend to turn to comics, games, toys etc to make ends meet because their highest yielding clients at that point are parents who bring their kids in because they don't know what to buy online and the kids are too young/random to verbalize specific wants in the hobby for moms to find online. And kids certainly aren't looking for an overpriced, sun-faded 1960 Topps Wally Moon for their collection.
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