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.

Ghostbusters Trading Cards

Lost in all the hoopla of the new lines of toys, junk food, and the limited time re-release of Ecto Cooler (which I still haven't found by the way) in conjunction with the new Ghostbusters movie, are these ... Ghostbusters trading cards! I've seen other box breaks online and I realized then that I had to get my hands on these.  I managed to get my hands on a box from DA Card World courtesy of my aunt who ordered a box for me since all the local shops were either out of stock or only had a few packs left. Normally I don't partake in non-sports products but these looked too awesome to pass up.

Packaging/Layout

The design of the box and of the packs is really cool. The box has that Slimer green color and the packs have a shiny foil design going on with a dark outline of all the Ghostbusters shooting their proton streams into the dark sky.. The breakdown is 5 cards per pack with 24 packs per box. While a "hits" (autographs, replica patch cards, slime cards, sketch cards, etc) are not guaranteed, most of these have been averaging about 2-3 of these per box. 

Base Set

The base set is 54 cards which makes it perfect to fit in a binder. You get a full base set in a box with a few duplicates thrown in. As you can probably tell the set chronicles the original film. The cards are nice and have a slick front. The backs give a brief paragraph about the scene or character pictured on the front. I was going to go through the base set and chat about my favorites but in the interest of space, I'll just show off the whole set.

Inserts

There are five major insert sets along with some foil parallels and in this box I got all five complete sets. Each one is pretty unique and fun.

Behind the Scenes: This is probably my least favorite of the batch, mainly because I'm not really into all the behind the scenes stuff of movies and TV. There are some interesting trivia bits on the backs of some of these, for example, did you know the monster on the card on the top left was supposed to be the monster in the library? It was cut because it was deemed too scary. The design on these reminds me of something from the 80s with the green and yellow.

Character Bios: Only seven cards in this set. Each one gives a brief background of the seven main characters in the film. Pretty self explanatory and the design is very clean.

Quote Cards: This is probably my favorite of all the insert sets. The designs are really fun but there are a few here that I wouldn't have included such as the "mass hysteria" quote and the "she's a dog" card. Otherwise, these are great and I'm happy that Winston's line of "Ray, when somone asks you if you're a God, you say yes!" got included.

Sing For Your Specter: Not sure how this fits in but according to the back of the cards it's an original comic two artists came up with for the set. It's interesting and fun for people into comics I guess but not really something I'm into. I do like the art in this though.

Tricks and Traps: So this is cool. I really dig this picture that the nine cards in this set make as it really encompasses a lot of what makes the original film great. All four original Ghosbusters, plus Ecto-1, Stay-Puft, and Slimber. The only nitpick I have about this is that the cards aren't numbered in the right order so you have to mix and match until you form the picture.

Foil Parallels: These are just parallel foil versions of base cards and insert cards, nothing more. It'd be really cool to get the Tricks and Traps set in foil to go along with the regular set.

Hits

As I mentioned in the open, there are no guaranteed hits per box but in most breaks I've seen, hits are averaging about 2-3 per box. Autograph cards are 1:30 packs, which falls just outside the realm of the 24 pack box. I got three hits in my box, including an autograph and a really hard pull. Other hits in the product can include slime cards and animation cel cards.

First up is this 1/1 sketch card. I'm not sure who drew it as the artist signature on the back is completely illegible but knowing that it's a 1/1 makes it really neat. You can feel the felt on the front and you can see on the back where some of the ink bled through. Each sketch card in the product is a 1/1 and if you pull one, it's definitely something very unique.

Autographs come 1 in every 30 packs so I was actually expecting not as I usually either get gipped or I get hits of players I really don't care about in my history of breaking boxes. I'm guessing this is from Ghostbusters 2, which I haven't seen in a long, long time but judging by eBay prices, it's one of the better autographs in the set. Obviously I would have preferred Dan Aykroyd but this will do.

Here's a card I really wanted when I saw it on the checklist. Apparently these replica patch cards are a hard pull so in that case I consider myself lucky. These are pretty simple, no frills cards and when I pulled it out of the pack, there was only one other card in the pack with it. I'm not complaining, it's still one of the marquee names.

If you're into the classic Ghostbusters films and cartoons, then this is definitely a product to check out. Like I said, I'm not really into the whole non-sports cards scene but I'm a huge Ghostbusters fan and I couldn't pass these up. Grab a box of these, I guarantee you won't be disappointed.