Portland Sports Card Co

Portland Sports Card Co is a vintage sports card dealer at 3939 NE Hancock St in Portland, and it is not a walk-in retail shop. The business buys and sells baseball, football, basketball and hockey cards along with sports collectibles, working from an office by appointment. It suits sellers with an older collection or an estate to place, and collectors who buy online rather than browse a shop floor.

What the business handles

The focus is vintage. The business buys and sells baseball, football, basketball and hockey cards, sports collectibles, graded sports cards, minor league baseball card team sets, and regional, police, college and food issue card set teams. Manufacturers and series run from Topps, Bowman, Fleer, Goudey and Post Cereal, with issues spanning the 1910s through the 1970s.

Current inventory sells primarily online, so what is for sale at any given time is not sitting in a case at the office.

What it buys

The want list is specific. The business looks for baseball cards from the mid-1980s and older, and football, basketball and hockey cards from the mid-1980s and older. It also wants sports publications from the 1980s and older, collections of the biggest names and rookie cards, and collections of professionally graded cards. Collections that include items outside that list are considered too. Sellers start by sending a brief description of what they have.

Estates and trusts are a specialty, which makes the business a natural stop for families settling a collection they did not build themselves.

Grading help

The business submits cards to PSA for professional grading on the customer's behalf, and can usually save customers money on the submission costs. It also helps evaluate which cards in a collection may benefit from grading. Once the cards come back, it can sell them for the customer if that is the preference.

Visiting by appointment

There is no retail shop and there are no walk-in hours. Because of a frequent travel schedule, visits to the office at 3939 NE Hancock St, Suite 317, are arranged ahead of time by phone or email. Plan the trip around the appointment rather than dropping by.

History

The business was founded in 1975 and is one of the oldest sports collectibles businesses in the country. Over more than fifty years it has served collectors in its store, at card shows, at live auctions and by mail. Along the way it was named 1994-95 Sports Collectible Dealer of the Year, ranked among the Top 20 Sports Collectible Dealers by Trading Cards Magazine, received an Outstanding Customer Support Award from Pacific Trading Cards, and entered the National Sports Collectors Convention Hall of Fame in 2002.

The local scene

Several other hobby stores sit within about a mile of the office on NE Hancock St: The Hobby Smith at 0.1 miles, Easy Peasy TCG at 0.6 miles, Cosmic Monkey Comics at 0.7 miles, Puddletown Games & Puzzles at 0.8 miles, and Acme Comicbooks and Trading Cards at 1 mile. All are in Portland. Because Portland Sports Card Co operates by appointment, pairing a scheduled visit with a stop at one of the neighboring shops is an easy way to make the trip worthwhile.