Triple Crown Sports Cards

Triple Crown Sports Cards is a family-owned sports card shop in Germantown, Tennessee, a suburb of Memphis, that has been open since August 1, 1998. The stock leans heavily toward singles, running from pre-war cards to the current year, with sealed boxes, packs, sets, figures and signed memorabilia filling out the rest. It suits collectors who want a long-running, single-focus card shop with deep back stock rather than a game store with a play space.

What's on the shelves

Most of the inventory is singles in baseball, basketball, football and hockey, and a large portion of that stock never makes it into the store's catalog. Collectors hunting for a specific card, or wanting a scan of one before they come in, can ask by email. Prices move with the market, so price and availability on any item are worth confirming by email before a trip.

Sealed product covers baseball, basketball, football, hockey and a few other sports, and it reaches back further than most shops bother to hold. Older packs include Upper Deck from 1990 and 1992, with the Upper Deck jumbos running $5.25 a pack. Recent releases run from Mosaic blasters and Topps Update to Allen & Ginter, Stadium Club, Topps Chrome and Topps Heritage mega boxes. Current-year Bowman, Bowman Chrome, Donruss and Series 1 and Series 2 are in the mix, with Allen & Ginter boxes at $219 and Bowman Chrome at $565. Prices on these change, so treat them as a sense of range.

The store also carries sports figures, including bobbleheads and Mattel, McFarlane and Starting Lineup pieces, along with collecting supplies.

Memorabilia

The memorabilia case is more substantial than a typical card shop shelf. Signed baseballs include a 1942 St. Louis Browns team ball with signatures from Rick Ferrell, Luke Sewell and Vern Stephens, among others, and a ball signed by 22 members of the 1988 World Champion Dodgers, including Tommy Lasorda, Kirk Gibson and Orel Hershiser. Several pieces came from the collection of Negro League player Joe B. Scott, among them a Monte Irvin ball inscribed HOF 73, a Virgil Trucks baseball and a Negro League Museum hat signed by Ted Double Duty Radcliffe.

Smaller items run from signed 8x10 photos from the 2005 Upper Deck Portraits Signature Portraits set to a 1990 Sugar Bowl ticket from Miami against Alabama, a Peyton Manning bust sculpture and a Gino Marchetti signed mini-helmet with a JSA certificate of authenticity. A Tom Seaver signed print, numbered to 1992 and signed by both Seaver and the artist, is available framed or unframed.

Hours and getting there

The shop sits at 7519 Capital Drive, inside the Corporate Center Office Complex off West Street, between Poplar Avenue and Old Poplar Pike. From West Street, turn in at the fourth entrance, the brick one marked Corporate Centre, take an immediate right, then turn left at the first street, which is Capital Drive. The store is the first building on the left.

Drivers coming from I-40 use exit 16B and follow Germantown Parkway south, while those on I-240 use exit 15 and head east on Poplar Avenue.

History

Triple Crown opened on August 1, 1998, and has stayed a small, family-run operation ever since. Nearly three decades in the same suburb has built a stock that covers the full arc of the hobby, from pre-war singles to this year's releases.

The local scene

Several other card and game stores sit within a short drive in Memphis, which makes a combined trip easy. Planethobby is 1.8 miles away, Game X Change is 2.7 miles, Game Exchange is 4.5 miles, 901 Comics East is 4.9 miles and University Games is 5.3 miles.