Saving the game

When a little old lady from Crane approached Dee Witt about 20 years ago and asked him if he'd like to take a look at some sports cards her late husband had stashed in the attic, he said sure.

She was only asking for $50 or $60 for the whole shoebox collection.

Witt, then a roughneck who traded sports collectibles on the side, told her he'd be willing to take a look and see if the cache was worth her asking price.

What he found inside that shoebox changed the course of Witt's life.

The first four cards he found, he said, were Mickey Mantle rookie cards, the holiest of sports collectors' grails worth more money than some folks' cars.

And that little old widow from Crane wanted $60 - tops - for the entire collection. 

Witt shook his head as he recalled how he told her he couldn't take her cards for $60 and live with himself.

"There's got to be honesty in this business," he said, "or you're not going to last very long."

Instead of making a fortune at her expense, he called a friend from up north who caught the next flight south and offered the lady $18,000 for her late husband's collection.

"She just couldn't grasp that people would pay that much for cardboard," he said.

Plus, the man offered Witt a $2,500 finders fee, which he accepted and used to open his first memorabilia shop.

But that was in the early to mid-1990s, when the going was good for collectors' shops.

According to Charles "Red" Klinger, a local collector who runs a memorabilia operation out of his wife's antique store not far north of Witt's shop on Dixie Boulevard, Odessa had as many as 13 or 14 sport's memorabilia shops in the early 1990s.

Today, he said, there are about three - his wife's, Shantiques; Witt's, D's Cards & Memorabilia; and another, In the Zone Sports a few doors down from the Klingers' shop.

The way Klinger and Witt see it, the Internet changed the playing field, bringing amateurs and hoodwinkers into the game and basically just digitizing and decentralizing the physical, business-oriented exchange of sports memorabilia.

Another factor in the sports shop's demise was a profound overproduction of sports cards that led to their devaluation between about 1989 and 2000, a timeframe when the business started to boom and it seemed everybody wanted in.

"Then," Klinger said, "everybody was into cards."

Nowadays, Klinger's shop, which mostly sells just cards, occupies about a third of his wife's antique shop's floor space - a far cry from the shops he owned about 15 years ago downtown.

"With cards," Witt said, "it's getting to be where you can hardly make a living anymore."

"There's still a demand for them, sure," Klinger said. "The companies are getting bigger, but a lot of it is going through eBay."

All profits aside, however, all the local collectible business owners said they began collecting when they were children, so it's not so much about the money as it is about the culture.

Jay Rhoads, owner of In the Zone Sports, said he just wanted to create a place like the ones he would go to when he was a kid.
It was that "homely" atmosphere he was striving for when he opened his shop.

"You might make a really good friend out of somebody you're trading with," he said. "You never know."

"It's kind of like another family, is the best way of putting it," said Witt, who later referred to his profession as a "labor of love."

And, speaking of labor, he said, the real hard part is when he hits the road. 

As comfortable as Witt looks standing behind the counter of his shop on East 10th Street in Odessa, a dazzling array of autographed balls, jerseys and cards laid out in front of him - local collectors seem to agree Witt's shop carries the town's higher-end merchandise - Witt's broader career as a collector often keeps him away from home.

During the average year, Witt attends 14 or so trade shows in places like New York City, Chicago or San Francisco.

Today, he's in St. Louis at an All-Star Game convention, where he sets up his stand and buys, sells and barters with other his fellow traders from across the United States - a routine the other collectors said they no longer do now that they've grown older.

Witt himself said hauling all of his wares thousands of miles for an uncertain payoff gets to be exhausting sometimes, but the circuit has its perks.

"It's getting to the point that shows are a pain in the butt," he said, "but I really enjoy meeting the players (at conventions and autograph signing events)."

From Barry Bonds to Pete Rose, Witt recited a long list of sports legends he's met, and even, in some instances, with whom he's sat down for a meal.

As to what these titans were like in person, he didn't go into much detail, only saying that the guys you'd think were nice turned out to be jerks, and visa-versa. 

When Witt's on the road, that's when folks like Paul Warner, a former teacher at Permian High School who himself is an avid memorabilia collector, watch over the shop and talk sports with any customer with a few minutes to spare.

To him, collecting is not so much about the associated dollar signs - though he shared Witt's feelings that "in the back of your head is the investment aspect of it" - but more about the deeply personal response elicited by a particular item.

"Then this is fun," Warner said, pointing to a group of pre-adolescent boys who had just entered the shop and were gazing into the display cases, "watching these little ones getting enthusiastic about it."

ON THE NET
>> www.d-scardsandmemorabilia.com

IF YOU GO
>> D's Cards & Memorabilia, 1227A E. 10th St.
>> In the Zone Sports, 3631 N. Dixie Blvd.
>> Shantiques, 3615 N. Dixie Blvd.