Another Goodbye

Earlier this month one of the card shops I used to frequent in Japan, CAPS, closed up shop. I was going to write a post about that, but the best I could do was a little throwaway line. The shop was interesting though. If you wanted a certain Japanese oddball card, they were the most likely to provide it. BUT you'd have to invest entire days to searching through their inventory to see if they had what you wanted. As cool as it sounds it wasn't always ideal as it was kind of a dingy shop as the place reeked of tobacco smoke (as did their cards), and every binder/box was covered with dust. But you tolerated it because their prices were cheap. Also, the shop was located on the 7th floor of a shady apartment building where one of its tenants threw shit (actual human fecal matter!) at the walls in the hallway. Just wanted to share that with you all.

Even so, I'll miss CAPS. Now the only "go-to" card shop in Japan for me is Bits and their tragic flaw is that they only deal with recent/newer stuff, meaning that with CAPS' closure I'm now cutoff from Japanese vintage. Technically the city still has two other card shops as well, but they're more for box breakers (ie not me).

Meanwhile back here in the states, the card shop I've gone to the most since I returned stateside is closing up shop this month (on Saturday the 30th in fact).

The card shop in question is Chameleon Cards & Comics. I've blogged about them a few times. They were a great source of dime box singles for all of these past six years. They were also always stocked with 1975 Topps cards for some reason. Apparently NYC-based collectors have '75 Topps out the ying-yang.

As sad as CAPS closing down was, this one kinda hurts even more. Chameleon was the only card shop I could get to conveniently (ie with one subway ride) here in US. As it stands, I know of three other card shops, but one is in the suburbs and I need a car (or bike) to get there. There's another one in uptown Manhattan but that one never had any inventory that interested me or made me think that the time I spent getting there was worth it. There's also a third in midtown but that one's more for box breaking and gaming cards than for anything else.

It's not a total shock though. Chameleon was a card and comic store right smack dab between Wall Street and Bowling Green, the rent around there is nuts (note, Topps HQ is also around the vicinity) and I guess Chameleon couldn't keep up.

But damn, losing a shop I had easy access to that provided me with so much stuff I actually needed/used for my collection all these years really stings. And that's to say nothing of the cool staff there that will unfortunately have to find new jobs now.

Anyway my last trip to the shop was Thursday. By that point the store was pretty much empty. The only card things left were some discounted boxes/packs, some supplies, a few singles in the showcase and (incredibly on-brand for them) about three-dozen '75 Topps cards being sold for 50 cents each (note, the pictures above was from a past '75 Topps bargain bin, not the current one). Much to Night Owl's dismay I passed on them like I did with the ones that came before.

I thanked the folks for the service they've given me all these years, then left.

CAPS off to you Chameleon.

(Yes, that is how this blogpost ends, with a terrible pun).

In retrospect, I wish I had taken more pictures.

As always thanks for stopping by and take care.