Cooperstown welcomes new baseball card shop

From left to right, Brendan Smoot, store manager Max Penke, and Andrew Long of Dave & Adam’s Card World in Cooperstown

On the drawing board for months as COVID seeped in and out of business plans, Dave & Adam’s Card World in Cooperstown offered its ‘soft opening’ on Sunday, April 3 as visitors began trickling back into the village.

For the store’s staff, though, it’s not “just another baseball shop on Main Street in Cooperstown.” The Main Street location, just a few doors down from the Baseball Hall of Fame, is the card retailer’s first foray outside its home base of Buffalo, New York and its popular web-based business.

“We’re different in a lot of ways,” said store manager Max Penke. “We sell product direct from Topps, boxed sets and full packs only. We have vintage packs and sets. We’re not offering single cards that collectors can pick through.”

Topps is one of the country’s best-known trading card producers, bringing the baseball card to mass popularity in the 1950s and still printing cards for baseball, hockey, soccer, and wrestling. Dave & Adam’s relationship with the company puts Topps products uniquely onto the store shelves. The store has complete-set boxes, ‘blasters’ (boxes with 20 sealed packs of cards inside), and other complete-set offerings dating back to 1977. More is on the way.

“By the time Induction Weekend comes around, we’ll have double the product,” he said. “What you see now is just the start.”

Everything is in its original packaging, meaning that the customer is buying baseball cards not knowing which players or special cards they’ll find inside. That tradition carries on to what the store calls its ‘Hit Parade’ – exclusive products boxed on the store’s rear wall, offering signed memorabilia ranging from baseball bats to gloves to jerseys and baseballs.

The trick is the items are sealed just like packages of baseball cards – the buyer won’t know who’s autograph awaits inside until the buyer opens the package.

“It’s just like buying a pack of baseball cards,” Mr. Penke said. “The fun is in the surprise, but we guarantee that there’s an authenticated autograph from a major player in each box.”

Inside the display cases, boxes and packages of cards for baseball, MLS Soccer, Formula 1 racing, WWE (men and women), and Pokemon. The knowledgeable staff is ready to talk collecting with anyone who comes in.

“Card collecting is bigger than it’s ever been before,” Mr. Penke said. “During COVID, actually, people were sitting around looking for things to do and the market just shot up.”