Card Shop Chronicles: Magic City Sports Cards (Akron, OH)

Gosh, it's been a while since I've done one of these.

Anyway, I was visiting family in Akron (well, Copley ... which is near Akron) over the weekend and as usual, my uncle and I do a card shop trip. Instead of opting for the two regular shops, I decided to look and see if there were any others in the area. As it turns out, there was.

On a street just off Interstate 76, there is a place called Magic City Sports Cards. I found it via a Google Search but wasn't sure it was actually still in business. I called a few days before I visited to confirm its existence and sure enough, they were still there. The shop is in an old brick building in an old part of Akron on Kenmore Blvd. It was a little hard to find but we found it.

Here's the main wax area filled with recent and semi-recent stuff. There was a lot of selection, from 2001 Topps to lots of stuff from last year but strangely, no hockey wax. I asked about that and they said they don't carry hockey because it doesn't sell. I saw very little basketball as well, which is strange considering the area is rife with Cavs fans.

There were lots of cases filled with loads of singles from all time frames ranging from relic and autograph cards of present day to high dollar vintage singles and random other cards. Pretty much what you would find in any card shop.

Any shop that had junk wax is aces in my book. While the selection here wasn't the best, everything in the case was $10 each. I almost considered getting a box of the Upper Deck hockey cards or the box of 1990 Topps baseball but the last thing I need right now is more clutter when I'm trying to get rid of the excess.

If you're into oddballs or old non-sport cards, this is the place for you. This case was nothing but old non-sport wax packs and boxes. Look closely at the picture above, you'll seen packs of cards for Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Mork and Mindy, The Gong Show, and Planet of the Apes.

Here's a bunch of oddball and oversized cards including some random old hockey cards.

Behind the counters, the shelves were stacked with boxes and boxes of stuff. Too much stuff to even keep track of.

The rest of the cases had tons and tons of miscellaneous stuff. Just check out the variety of this case for example, the Johnny Bench that can be seen is a stack of 1970 Topps Posters. There's also some 1986 Topps minis, a stack of 1970 Topps Supers, a Cal Ripken Jr. commemorative plaque, and some 1987 O-Pee-Chee uncut sheets.

This really caught my attention. For five dollars each, you could get an actual Meadow Gold ice cream box, complete with the card still attached. I'm not sure if they were the blank back variety or the stat back variety though. The one thing though is that the boxes are in immaculate shape.

This case has all manner of crazy stuff from collectable Corgi cars to U.S. Presidents cards and 1964 Topps JFK cards to 1965 Philadelphia James Bond cards. My uncle said that when he worked in the toy shop at an amusement park when he was a kid, they sold Corgi cars.

Aside from the showcases, the tables in the middle of the shop had pretty much anything you could think of from nickel and dime boxes to oddball memorabilia to these autographed items. I would have  sifted through the dime and nickel boxes but we had to meet back up for lunch with the rest of the family at 1:00.

As for what I bought, the main thing I wanted was some 2017 Topps. I nabbed 10 packs at $2.00 a pack. I'm going to wait to open these until tomorrow or next weekend when I have some free time.

The other cool thing I purchased was this 1979 Cleveland Indians team photo. My uncle said that "that looks like the team picture from Major League" and to be honest, it sort of does. I've got a fun idea for an article based on this picture but I've got some research to do first.

Of the three card shops I've visited up here, this one definitely had the biggest variety of just random stuff but there was just a lot to digest. I think maybe next time I'll stick with my regular shops but this was a nice detour off the beaten path.