The hobby was hot in 1987. Tens of thousands of people were discovering or rediscovering baseball cards. It still wasn’t peak time. Over the next five years or so, dozens of new stores opened on the west coast. Many of them are gone…but not All Star Cards.
Owner Jerry Mudra was 33 when he opened his doors in the San Diego area community of Santee. He’s seen the ups and downs, the arrival of the internet and large scale change in the card manufacturers in the 24 years since.
His shop is still profitable thanks to a willingness to adjust–and go online too. He’s always busy in his The Buffalo native tells his customers not to think of cards as an investment., but rather as a way to share a love of sports, which his regular customers do as they sit around and talk.
Along with his daughter, Mudra has stayed in the same place for all of these years. Not that his little shop is a real estate agent’s dream. In fact, if you’re not looking for it, chances are you’ll miss it.
“It’s a terrible location,” he says. “It’s the worst location in the world for a retail store.”
His business was the subject of a profile in the Santee Patch.
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