There’s more to collectibles than comics, and Trading Card Games have become a core part of the pop culture communities. That’s why, this time, we took our ComicBook Shop Talk to The Game Cave, a store specializing in trading cards, board games, and role-playing games. Not only did we get a fantastic interview about the intricacies of the card game market, but we also managed to snatch some high-value cards for ComicBook’s vending machine (check it out here), which can become yours!
Long before he became co-owner of The Game Cave, Craig Johnson was a collector himself, with a special interest in Magic: The Gathering. Craig was kind enough to chat with ComicBook’s Chris Killian about his store and the hobby, offering invaluable insight on why certain TCGs became so expensive and how stores can still ensure their frequent customers get their cards at a fair price.
Before jumping to the interview, check out some of the amazing cards we found at The Game Cave.
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ComicBook Shop Talk is visiting stores all over the United States, and sometimes even abroad, to highlight the people and the places that make our hobbies so special. If you want your local comic shop or your local game shop to be featured next, send us a message at [email protected] and tell us all about it.
Game Cave
What Makes a Magic Collector a Good Store Owner
Image courtesy of Wizards of the Coast
Chris: Well, I won’t take up too much of your time, man, and thank you again for doing this. I just wanted to, you know, for the first question, you know, what was the game that really made you fall in love with games?
Craig: Yeah, so when I was very young, I kind of grew up with Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh! and other kinds of just basic trading card games. I was never serious about any of them; I just kind of collected the cards and played with my friends. When I was in middle school, I started playing Magic: The Gathering. Again, very casually, but slowly started to build up a passion for that game more than the others. It was very interesting to me. When I was out of high school and in college, I started meeting a couple of friends who took it seriously. I started playing in tournaments. I started traveling to big events. Played it, you know, semi-competitively for like five to seven years. Took a break from it and decided that I had an opportunity for the Game Store. It just sort of led me to that path.
Chris: So is that sort of the history behind the Game Cave? What made you want to start the store?
Craig: So the Game Cave was started in 2013 by a few individuals. My current business partner bought in in 2016, and then I bought out the rest of the original owners in 2020 to become a business partner with my friend, whom I’ve known since 2013-2014.
Chris: That’s awesome, man. Also, that’s super cool that you used to play kind of semi-competitively. Do you ever miss that?
Craig: Honestly, no. I think that out of my friend group, I was always the person who enjoyed the collecting aspect of trading cards a little bit more than the competitive side. I think that a lot of trading card games have this way to kind of scratch the itch in your brain for a lot of people, of critical thinking, math, and strategic things that you wouldn’t normally find in some other games. Just due to the complexity and the amount of game pieces available. I saw a little bit of success competitively. Nothing crazy. I went to the Magic Pro Tour one time and did terribly. But it was just kind of more so me getting to travel and have fun experiences with my friends over trying to achieve great success competitively.
Chris: Yeah, absolutely. Are Magic cards what you primarily collect now, or do you collect anything else?
Craig: Yeah, I would say that Magic cards are my main ones. I have collected other games over the years, and some of them have been more appealing to me than others. But it’s also tough as a store owner to be heavily collecting, right? Because so much inventory and stuff is coming through the store, the more invested in collecting you are, the harder it is to kind of separate out the business part from the passion part. So I pretty much just limit myself to Magic. I don’t really do any of the crazy printings or the expensive versions that they do now. I just try to stick with the original first printing of a card, just so I have the availability to play cards with my friends if I want to.
Chris: That’s awesome. I totally understand that, too. I mean, I used to be a big-time comic book collector, and I had a ton of stuff. But as I’ve been working with ComicBook.com and a lot of the experiences I’ve had, I’ve ended up meeting so many people. And I get given things too that they want us to show and stuff. I just feel like I have too much stuff now, and so my collection has kind of dwindled down to things I have stories about, you know what I mean? Yeah. I feel like it’s more personal, so I don’t just pick up regular comic books and keep them anymore. And it’s also a very expensive hobby, so I’d like to stay married.
Craig: I collected comic books for a long time, and I recently got out of it. I sold my whole collection through auctions and to some local people. I think for me, I love comics. I think comics are super cool and have this really neat, interesting backstory about how a single issue can have a unique character or a first appearance or some really relevant storyline. But for me, I think the killer is just the space, man. It takes up so much space.
Chris: Dude, I know. I was about to say that I’m not into card collecting, but I can definitely see the benefit of card collecting in the sense that it does not take… Because I have like eight long boxes in my closet, you know what I mean? It just takes up a whole closet because I don’t have anywhere else to put it.
Craig: When I got rid of my stuff, I think I got rid of like 45 long boxes.
Chris: Oh my god, yeah.
Craig: It was crazy.
Chris: I got rid of a good part of my collection a couple of years ago because I had some braces to pay for. I sold all of, like, Amazing Spider-Man 200 through 300, and stuff like that. It kind of pained me to let it go, but it’s one of those things that when I do, I always feel kind of better. I don’t know why.
Craig: I mean, I think the other side of it, too, right, is like you… Even if you’re like, Spider-Man is my favorite, right? So I understand seeing that thing go, but it’s also, what do you really want out of it, right? Like, are you holding it for an investment? Are you holding it for like, was it your original copy? Are you holding it just to hold it because you like it? So I think it’s really what is important to collecting to you, right? Like if I wasn’t actively playing Magic cards with my friends like every couple of weeks, I probably wouldn’t have the Magic collection I have, right? It just kind of depends on what’s beneficial for you. And I think, in all honesty, with some of those older comics, some of the prices, like I’m surprised more people haven’t decided, ‘Man, those prices are crazy, I gotta ship these,’ you know?
Chris: Right, exactly. What’s your absolute favorite thing about owning a business like Game Cave?
Craig: Yeah, so before Game Cave, I worked a lot of retail, and then I worked a lot of like commission sales jobs. I was really good at those commission sales jobs, but I decided to take the chance on the Game Cave mainly because I was passionate about the product. I had been in game stores for a large percentage of my life at that point. I thought that I could see and envision doing some things a little bit differently than how they were currently done, which I thought would be successful. And I think my favorite thing is that in owning your own business, it’s very nice to see the decisions that you make actually impact the bottom line, right? When you work for a company, sometimes it’s really hard to see your individual contributions contribute to the overall success. And I’ve made a lot of substantial changes to the Game Cave. Me and my business partner together have decided on things that need to change or need to be adjusted. And I think that from making those choices, we have put ourselves in a position to be a much better business and a business with the potential to grow in the future.
Why Are Trading Card Games Becoming So Expensive
Courtesy of The Pokémon Company
Chris: That leads me to my next question, which is, a lot of physical media businesses come and go. What’s been the secret for the Game Cave’s longevity, and where do you see the card business going in the next five to ten years?
Craig: That’s a loaded question. I’ll try to break it down. What do I think we do differently, and what has led to our success? I think that for the most part, when it comes to our store, or I’ll say this, when it comes to a lot of physical media shops, I think it really depends on the media. I think when it comes to game stores specifically, the tough thing about game stores is that I think most of the people that open them don’t open them because they want to own a business. They open them because they want to have essentially a clubhouse for them and their friends, right? They just boil it down to I like games. It would be really great if I could play games for my job and be able to get them at wholesale cost, which is fine, and it’s a good thought process.
However, if you don’t have the passion and the drive to do the business side of it, to run it as a retail business that has to make profit margins and has to be able to grow and has to be able to expand and become a bigger thing, eventually it’s going to either stagnate or fail. I think a lot of those shops that are pretty much just doing the clubhouse type thing are fine, but I think they’re really stunted in growth.
My business partner and I are both very understanding that I very much appreciate trading card games. He very much appreciates board games and miniature games. We collectively understand that the business part comes first. We can like these games, we can collect these games, we can play these games, but at the end of the day, it’s making sure that the business is profitable, that the business is thriving, that we’re putting all the effort into the events and the promotions, and that we’re making sure we’re staying well stocked for the customers. Those are the priorities. I think that is a big thing that separates our business from some of the other LGSs. I think there are a lot of game stores that do it a little bit better than us, and I think there are some that do it a little bit worse than us. But I think that when you brought up a lot of media stores are closing, I think that in the LGS space, that is a big reason why a lot of them close.
What was the second part of your question?
Chris: Just where do you see the card and the gaming business going in the next 5-10 years?
Craig: Yeah, that’s honestly an even more interesting part of the question. Trading cards are kind of crazy. I think that there are a couple of factors that have been making things very weird for customers and store owners alike. Mainly, I would say it kind of started with Pokémon about a couple of years ago. I specifically remember it was with the set Surging Sparks. There was a big shift in Pokémon‘s printing priorities where they had kind of made an announcement of like, ‘Hey, we’re buying our own printing factory. We’re going to be printing more cards than ever.’ But then with that set, all of my distributors nationwide kind of had a limit like, ‘Hey, we don’t have enough of this now.’
Before that, all sets were like, I would order what I wanted, I would get allocated what I wanted, and if I wanted to order more, I could. With that set, Surging Sparks, there was a big shift in the market where I was told how much I could buy. If there was a restock, it was very much like heavily allocated, very limited. And it was based on how much money you’re spending on Pokémon as a store. And that really shifted the market pretty substantially. I know a lot of people are very frustrated in the space now ever since then because Pokémon‘s a very limited product now. It’s hard to get. When stores get it, they’re normally like instantly sold out or their prices are extremely high. And that’s tough for a lot of consumers.
A lot of consumers view it as, you know, ‘Oh, people are scalping this product or game stores are overcharging for it.’ And I think it’s much more complicated than that because in a way, if you think about it, if I’m a store and I get told, ‘Hey, you can order as much of this product as you want. It’s infinite. It doesn’t matter how much you order. We’ll still have it for you. It’s in print for the next three years. Keep ordering it.’ That’s great, right? Because I can order, let’s say, 200 boxes, put them on the shelf for MSRP. People come in and buy them. When I run low, I just order more. And I keep putting them out for MSRP. I keep making my exact margin, right? Which is how it should be. But when I’m told, ‘Hey, you can only get 50 of these boxes, you’re never going to be able to get them again,’ that’s it. This is all you’re gonna get. And then when I get those, then I see, okay, well, the MSRP is, let’s say, 160 bucks. And online, they’re going for 300 bucks. And they’re selling, right? I can see a lot of game stores being put in a weird position there because they kind of have to think like, ‘Okay, are the people who are buying from me people who are actually going to be enjoying this product, right? Or is it going to be people who are buying it from me just to put it up on eBay for twice the money they bought it for?’
Courtesy of The Pokémon Company
It’s a really, really tough back and forth because on one hand, I would really love for the people that love the game and want to open the cards and collect to be able to do it for the price that they should be able to do it for. But on the other hand, I have employees to pay. I have bills to pay. I have things like that. So we’ve kind of really gone back and forth on what would be the best path to make that happen.
Our solution, we kind of do it differently game by game. Our solution for Pokémon is if a set’s going to come out, a set is going to release where we get it at wholesale from distributors. We don’t have to worry about it being marked up higher based on the market or not having to buy extra stuff to be able to get it. We always do it so that on the day of release, everyone can line up outside our store. When everyone comes in, we let in five people at a time, and we say, ‘Hey, you can get one of each of these new items. It’s MSRP if we take off the outer shrink wrap or the wrapping or open up the packaging. And it’s market value if you want to leave it sealed.’
We do that because most of the people who are reselling or trying to flip these products for a profit or scalping them need it sealed. People don’t want to deal with trading card products that have been opened. But if you’re someone who’s going to immediately open it anyway, that sacrifice of watching us open in front of you kind of eliminates the need for that upcharging. I know that the people who are getting it are the people who enjoy it, the people who collect it, and those people are going to come back. As opposed to selling it to someone who’s just going to put it up on their eBay store, and they don’t really care about the game. So that’s our kind of solution to that.
But we’ve been seeing a similar path that Pokémon is taking with extremely limited products across a lot of games. Right now, One Piece is in its third year, I think, going on three years now, four years. They also heavily limit their product. They base their allocations on how many events you run and how many unique players you have in those events. Those times they do a new set, they say, ‘Here’s how many you’re going to get. You’ll never get any more. We’re never going to reprint it.’ And that’s it. And so you, as the store owner, kind of have to say, ‘Okay, do I want to sell these boxes on the shelf and then they’re gone in one weekend, and I can never get them again? Do I save them and use them as prize support for events, so that I can get more players in, so that I can get a larger allocation the next time? Do I do something in the middle? Do I do pre-orders for my locals?’ It’s a kind of complicated juggling act of what is the best thing for you to do as a store owner to ensure the growth of the business, as well as making sure that you’re keeping your customers happy.
We’ve pretty much limited all of the products that we get for One Piece to local players. If you’re not someone who’s actively playing in my events on a regular basis, we basically don’t have product to sell you. We have some loose tops, but it’s just the nature of the game and how much it’s growing in our active player base. We kind of have to have the product for them. Currently, we have about, I would probably say somewhere in the range of 80 to 120 unique One Piece players. We probably see about 60 of them weekly on average. So when you’re getting 100 and something boxes, that already keeps your products pretty limited, right?
Image Courtesy of Toei Animation
I would say that the only game that’s not really going down that path that we just talked about is Magic: The Gathering. But Magic does it in a different, interesting way. They do collector boxes, which are much more limited, much more expensive, fancier versions of the sets that come out. But they’re much more expensive. MSRP for packs kind of ranges between $27 and $35 or $40, depending on whether it’s a certain type of set or not. And most of those boxes, you see, the second they come out, they have a serialized card in them. They have special versions of cards and special foilings that you can only get there. So the prices of those boxes kind of skyrocket astronomically.
Chris: It sounds like Magic kind of does it a little bit more like the comic book industry does in a way.
Craig: Yeah, with the comic books, they do the regular printing, and then they’ll do very coveted products.
Chris: Right, exactly, yeah.
Craig: Very similar thing. So I might get 250 regular boxes of Magic, and then I’ll get like 50 collector boxes. So at that kind of ratio, those will go much faster because the demand is so much higher and they’re so much more limited.
Chris: That’s interesting. Well, that’s a really cool middle ground that you sort of found with the Pokémon cards and everything like that. Last question for you, man. And as I said, I really appreciate you and your time and everything. Do you remember what the most expensive card is that you’ve sold personally?
Craig: Yeah, it’s actually kind of a cool story. So I had an individual who came to the store a few years back. He collected Magic when it came out, back when Alpha was only sold at conventions. He basically put Magic down after a year or so because he thought The Legend of the Five Rings was a better card game. That card game did not last anywhere near as long as Magic, but it’s just kind of a funny tidbit. He put the cards away for a long time. He came back to the game years and years later when his son was a little bit older and wanted to play. He bought a couple of starter decks and played with his son. His son didn’t really care for it, so he took all the cards and put them back in the closet.
His family had some medical health issues that he needed to pay for that were pretty expensive. Through his process of figuring out what he was going to do, he brought the Magic cards to our store. Through our conversation with him and looking through everything that he had, we bought most of his collection. That’s like 95% of his collection for $33,000. He then had one of each of the original Magic‘s Power 9, so the Black Lotus, the Five Moxes, Ancestral Recall, Time Walk, and Timetwister. He also had a handful of pretty expensive Alpha cards that weren’t Power 9. I’d probably say five or six, just off the top of my head. We were very honest with him. We told him, ‘Look, our store isn’t really in the market to do these. They’re amazing cards. They’re amazing collectibles. We don’t have the clientele that’s actively coming and buying these.’ I told him, ‘I’ll tell you what, I’m going to Las Vegas for a big convention. I know a handful of the bigger vendors there. I would be happy to shop these around for you and get you exactly the price you’re looking for.’ Do them on consignment. He said, ‘That’s perfect.’ I took those, I think it was 13 or 14 cards, to Vegas, and I sold them for another 50 grand.
Chris: Wow, that’s crazy, dude.
Craig: For a box of cards in his closet, we were able to get him $83,000 or something insane.
Chris: That’s wild, man. Dude, that’s awesome. Craig, man, thank you very much for your time, dude. I really appreciate it. This is super fascinating to me. Honestly, I wish I had more time. I would love to get into a card game and go consistently.
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If you own a comic book or card shop and would like us to do a shopping spree at your store (or if you’re a customer who would like to nominate your favorite retailer), reach out to us at [email protected]. We’re assembling a nationwide list of interested stores to visit – as well as some international locations!
Meanwhile, give the Vending Machine a spin. We wish you the best of luck in your pulls.
