In need of cash and short on options, Luke Frey is now willing to part with a cherished piece of his childhood – for a price.
The Fort Wayne man’s story is becoming more and more common during today’s economy.
The sales job Frey, 27, worked in Phoenix for three years disappeared more than eight months ago. He was forced to move back home to live with his folks and take unemployment benefits, which are close to running out. Now he’s resorting to something he thought he’d never do.
He’s hawking a stack of Superman comics – including an original issue No. 2 he said was once priced at $500 – and a bundle of old Michael Jordan basketball cards he treasured throughout his boyhood.
“I’m basically trying to move them as quickly as I can,” Frey said. “The place that I’m at in my life, I’m racking my brain to make money.”
Frey isn’t the only one trying to cash in on hobbies or long-cherished collections. People are flocking to local collectible shops, some out of desperation, hoping they can spin that old Spider-Man or grandma’s gold ring into a stack of greenbacks.
“We’ve been here for 28 years, and it’s never been like this,” said Tracy Scott, owner of Books, Comics & Things, which has stores near the Georgetown shopping center and at Time Corners.
In years past, Scott said he would get one or two calls a week from people looking to unload their collections. Last fall, those calls jumped to six or eight on an average day, he said.
So many people are selling, Scott said, that the money he set aside this year to buy such comics ran out in the spring, making it so he had to pass up buying titles he would have otherwise snatched up in a heartbeat.
Others looking for money are digging out old jewelry and taking it to stores such as Sport Spot at 1015 Coliseum Blvd. E.
“I’ve had people come in selling jewelry so they can put gas in their car,” owner Ron Straessle said.
Originally specializing in sports cards, Sport Spot has grown to include other collectibles. Currently, jewelry, scrap or otherwise, is the most common item coming through the door. A lot is from people cleaning out their drawers since the gold and silver market spiked, Straessle said.
But some people, he added, are desperate.
“I had someone come in with a piece of jewelry I could only offer $5 for, but they said, ‘I’ll take it. I need it,’ ” Straessle said.
Things are similar at AZ Coins & Stamps Inc., owner Barry Krumlauf said. His shop has been a mainstay at Glenbrook Square for more than 30 years, and like at Sport Spot, people are coming to him to sell their jewelry or metals.
“A lot of people out there don’t have jobs. They come in and mention they’re out of work,” Krumlauf said. “I’ve not seen it where so many of them have been out of work, not in 33 years.”
Things that aren’t selling for much money, according to Krumlauf and Straessle, are the old sports cards.
Krumlauf said he doesn’t buy any cards pre-1960, and a Mark McGwire card that was once priced at more than $200 in the late 1990s now sits under glass at Sport Spot with a price tag of $30.
Overproduction, the baseball steroids scandal and the trend that collectors focus on current players in more popular sports have contributed to the decline in some sports cards, Straessle said.
That could spell trouble for Frey, who estimated his Michael Jordan basketball card collection was worth about $1,000 when he quit collecting eight or nine years ago.
A woman who walked into Straessle’s store in mid-July had a set of basketball cards that belonged to her adult son and included a Jordan. Her son, she said, thought the set might be valuable because of the Jordan card and told her she should see how much she could get for it.
Straessle told her the set was selling for $10 on eBay.
“When Michael Jordan was playing, basketball was king,” Straessle said. “Now, football and the NFL is king of the hobby.”
In any case, most cards are being sold by people who find them in attics or while cleaning their house, not by people in desperate need of money, according to Straessle.
As with his cards, Frey suspects his comic book collection has taken a hit in price, although how much he doesn’t know yet.
Among his collection is an original issue from nearly a decade ago in which DC Comics famously killed off Superman, only to bring him back through a story arc played out in several issues.
Frey has those, too, in his package. All told, he thought the comics were worth about $1,000 when he quit collecting. For the comics and the cards he’s asking about $175 in an online ad.
And there might be more he’ll look to sell if he has to, he said, although it won’t be at such a bargain.
There’s a framed poster of the “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” television show signed by the cast that he prizes and a similar poster signed by the cast of the spinoff show “Angel.”
He paid a pretty good price for both. He doesn’t want to sell those yet, but …
“I’m trying get money for anything right now, to pay the bills,” Frey said.
