Cooperstown History

Exploring the history

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1988-1989:   Before Cooperstown Store Opening

• In 1988, Jason Cooper (11yrs old) started collecting baseball and football cards.  He would take his allowance/chore money or snack/lunch money and go buy packs of Topps and Donruss cards after school at the market (Montecito Shopping Center), or ride his bike up to Mike's Baseball Card Shop... next to the Fish and Chips place on Hwy 12)   He built up a large collection over the next couple years.
   
• Jan 1989:  Superbowl XXIII: 49ers beat Bengals

• Summer 1989: Kathy and Mike Cooper (Jason's parents) owned an interior design store called "The Home Works".   Kathy would occasionally bring excess wallpaper rolls or window coverings to flea markets to sell.   On a couple occasions in 1989, Jason came along to the flea market with his card collection, and grabbed a part of the table to set out cards and try to sell them at the flea market.   
  
  At one flea market event in mid 1989 Jason put out his cards at the end of a table, and made a bunch of sales there, and even bought some cards from another table and set them out and resold them for more during the show.   At the end of the day, Jason had made more from selling cards than the sales for interior design stuff on the table.  
  
  After the flea market, Kathy and Jason were sitting on couches in the front family room -- and Jason was re-counting his cash from the flea market card sales -- and that's when Kathy floated the idea that Jason should maybe open a store, like Mike's Baseball Card Shop... that thought immediately clicked into Jason's mind and became an obsession.
  
  Jason proceeded to badger his parents, Mike and Kath, for around six months straight, pretty much every day.  When his parents would get angry at Jason for verbally asking, he would leave little post-it notes around the house and stuck to the refrigerator -- begging to let him open a card store.  Jason had some money that was set aside for college from grandparents... somewhere around $8k in savings.   That was the Jason's angle - that he wanted to use his college savings to open a store. 

• World Series 1989: A's beat Giants (Bay Bridge Series, Loma Prieta Earthquake)

• Nov 1989:  Mike brought Jason to a Trading Card Show at at the El Rancho Tropicana convention hall in Santa Rosa....  this was a few weeks before Xmas.  The show was an absolute mad house, packed with people so tightly that it was hard to walk up and down the aisles.   Cash was flying in and out of the hands of every vendor at the show.  Jason bought and sold cards with the vendors.   That's when Mike really started to see the potential for a card store business.   This was an industry that was exploding in popularity in the late 1980s.    
   
• Dec 1989:  Kathy found the 4910 Sonoma Hwy location had a small 300sq ft space available for rent (next to Heavenly Hamburger) -- with no long term lease, and just $350/mo.   (Kathy discussed with Mike with letting Jason know yet)

1990:

• Jan 9, 1990:  On Jason's 13th birthday, Kathy and Mike let Jason know they found that small location next to Heavenly, and that he could open a card store with his college savings.  
   
• Jan 1990: Superbowl XXIV: 49ers beat Broncos
   
• At first, the business didn't sell comics, so the initial name was just "Cooperstown" or "Cooperstown Cards"...   Kathy came up with this naming idea.   It was unanimously decided that it was the perfect name for a baseball card store, matching the name of the the baseball hall of fame, and the families last name, Cooper. 

• Kathy, Mike and Jason go out to East Bay on a school day to purchase the initial inventory of boxes/packs of cards... It was the perfect day... Jason got to play hooky from school and spend thousands of dollars on boxes of sports cards.   We spent probably half of my college savings in that one trip...   I remember going through and picking out dozens of different wax boxes which would be our initial inventory of packs.   Was that place in East Bay called "Capital Cards"?  Or something else?   I remember getting a giant receipt that day from them for everything we purchased... I wonder if that was kept?  Do we possibly still have that receipt somewhere? 

• The inventory of individual cards was Jason's personal collection at the start... He had several thousand cards by that point -- hundreds of Giants, A's, 49ers and Raiders cards that  he had collected over the previous couple years... plus hundreds of other star player cards from all across the leagues.  Jason went through and priced each individual card before opening... and organized them in the display cases that were purchased for the store.

• Opening:  February, 1990.  (4910 Sonoma Hwy.)   The first day of opening -- Jason rode his bike from school to the store with a couple friends from Rincon Valley Jr High, and within a few minutes of getting there we had maybe 6-8 people, along with Jason waiting outside.  Jason didn't have a copy of the store key yet, so we waited for a couple minutes outside, but Kathy showed up pretty quickly, and we opened up the store for the first time.   The register wasn't yet set up... But that we sold some packs and cards and saved the first dollar we made - to display it on the wall. 

• Jason would ride his blue BMX bike from school every day down to the store, and open from about ~2:30pm until ~6:30pm in the evening initially... and then open full days on the weekends.   Sometimes Jason would open the store by himself after school, when Kathy had to take care of the younger children after school.    Jason would do his school homework each day on the counters when there were no customers in the store. 
   
• Mike (father) mostly just worked at Cooperstown on the weekends at first, as he was still holding down the fort at The Home Works during weekdays (at Town and Country Center location)... and Ryan (younger brother) would occasionally come out... though he was only 10/11yrs old when the store first opened.  After a couple months, Kathy started opening the store during the weekday mornings, before Jason got out of school, then Jason would ride over after school each day and either take over the afternoon shift, or work with Kathy until closure.  

• For the first couple years, Jason was the primary person in charge of negotiating / trading / purchasing cards from customers, as he was the only one who knew all their values and what the hot cards were.  Adults would come into the store and if they wanted to trade or sell cards, they had to negotiate with Jason (13yrs old).   Many adults thought that they would be able to take advantage of a 13yr old kid when buying/selling/trading, but Jason had excellend negotiation skills.  He had a sort of photographic memory back then when it came to remembering the values of thousands of cards... down to the nickel.   Jason would study the monthly Beckett card price guides religiously, and knew the value of virtually every sports card in the guides, and the trends of how cards had risen or fallen over the past year.   Jason was also an avid follower of the sports, paying attention to which players were hot, and who the upcoming rookies were. 

• Initially Cooperstown was mostly focused on baseball and football cards, but within about six months, the store expanded more into basketball and hockey cards as well.  We expanded our selection of early and mid '80s wax packs for all four major sports.   Also, started expanding into other sports collectibles like signed baseballs and photos, and related merchandise like sports posters.  Also, started selling candy / snacks. 
   
• About six to nine months in Cooperstown started renting video games as well, which, initially was from Jason's collection of Nintendo and Sega Genesis games, but then we started purchasing additional games just for rental purposes.  The game rental business quickly expanded.
   
• Jason and the family ate a lot of Heavenly Hamburger back then (the restaurant that shared a wall with Cooperstown)... like 4-5 days a week.   The Coopers were friends with the people who worked there, and they would often give free burgers, and we would reciprocate with free Nintendo video game rentals.  Dan and Shelly?.. I believe their names were.   

1991:

• Cooperstown used to rent tables at local card trade shows around this time... every couple months there were trade shows at the fairgrounds, Days Inn, or other locations in Sonoma county, and Cooperstown would set up a table (or two) at these shows and buy/sell/trade cards and advertise our store.   We also did one big trade show in San Francisco at the Moscone center, which was epic in size... with hundreds of vendors.  We met a lot of new people in the business there.  Mike and Jason stayed in San Francisco overnight for that show.   We did lots of negotiations at these trade shows, and often scoured the other tables before the shows opened to public -- and bought up stuff that we could resell quickly and mark up for profit.
   
• 1991 was the inaugural season of San Jose Sharks hockey... first NHL Bay Area hockey team.   Mike and Jason had partial season tickets to the first season at SF Cow Palace.    
   
• Inventory was usually restocked with trips down to Abar in San Rafael.  That was our primary wholesale distributor for unopened wax boxes of sports cards and other collectible items.  Kathy would drive out a couple times a month in the morning to restock inventory of wax boxes.  

• We also used to get tips about Costco shipments around this time.  We would go out early in the mornings with Executive/Business membership, and get in 30 minutes before general public, and run in as soon as they opened the doors to grab as many Upper Deck or Leaf Boxes as we could... or sometimes other products.  Costco would sell them for cheaper than we could get from any of the other distributors we bought from... and some were in such high demand that Costco would sell out an entire palette of goods in 10-20 minutes. 
   
• Summer '91 - moved to the second location. (4918 A Sonoma Hwy), which was just about 30ft away, but about twice the size (~600sq ft) - that's when we really expanded into selling comics as well, and became "Cooperstown Comics and Cards".  This was when the Home Works was really winding down, and there was only a few more months before the parents officially closed down their other store, The Home Works and Mike focused more full time at Cooperstown.    
   

1992: 

• Cooperstown really expanded comics selection a lot in '92... this was the height of the 90s comic boom... Valiant Comics first hit the market in early '92 and the most famous Marvel Artists, Todd McFarlane, Rob Liefeld, Jim Lee and Erik Larsen split off and started Image Comics in '92.   There were so many new and popular comic series coming out in '92 and '93.   That became a major portion of Cooperstown business at the 4918 Sonoma Hwy location.  We also purchased lots of silver age comics, and became a real competitor to Fantasy Books and Games downtown.
   
• We converted the back room into an arcade in this second location after closing down the Home Works office.   We had all Jason's favorite games through the early/mid 90s, including Street Fighter 2, Mortal Kombat, Mike Tyson's Punch Out, and a couple other  favorite arcade games in that back room.   Our store became a regular hangout for many kids in the area.  Met Chris Fraze in '93 through playing Street Fighter in back room.

• In this second location, we also started selling some some role playing games and other misc collectible cards (non sports cards like Nascar racing cards, Boris Vallejo, etc).  
   
• Around this time is when Ryan (younger brother) started to come in and work more as well.. when he was ~13yrs old. 

1993:

• Jason buys Datsun 200SX car and gets drivers license, and can drive to work instead of riding bike or getting dropped off after school.  I vividly remember the day I turned 16 and drove my car by myself down to the store... that was a good day :)
   
• Around this time is when we started to really use SportsNet a lot- early internet bulletin board system on our Amiga 500 computer.  Dad would purchase boxes that would be shipped to us... stuff we couldn't find at our Bay Area distributors.  Sometimes we would purchase SF Bay Area player cards and memorabilia from shops across the country, where they weren't as popular.

• June '93 - moved to McDonalds Mission Plaza.  (~1200sq ft?)   As I recall we had a total of three different configurations at Mission Plaza over the years.
   
• Does anyone recall the name of the comics distributor we primarily used?, and the name of the guy who would come by our shop and take orders from us in our store? 

1994:

• At the Mission Plaza location, we started selling Magic the Gathering (MTG), Star Wars, Star Trek and other Collectible Card Games (CCGs).  These CCGs quickly became hot selling items, and within a year or so they were as big as sports cards. 
   
• We started hosting the largest Magic tournaments in the North Bay Area, upstairs in McDonalds Mission Plaza.  At our height, our MTG tournaments had up to ~60-70 people in them, and would go for an entire day from morning to night.  I remember advertising the events with flyers and running those tournaments each weekend -- Dad and I were the official MTG Rules Experts, and had to regularly make judgement calls and interpretations of the MTG rule set when various card combinations were played with ambiguous results.   Each tournament had cash buy ins and prizes to the winners, and runners up. 
   
• We started selling Pogs, Tamagotchis, and Pokemon stuff around this time as well... we sold basically every collectible fad at this point.  :)  

1995:

• Superbowl XXIX: 49ers beat Chargers
   
• Cooperstown makes a move in Mission Plaza, to our largest space configuration.  (~2000sq ft?)
   
• We expand into PC and console video game sales as well, and significantly expand other collectible items as well, like action figures, vinyl collectible figurines, and pewter figures.
   
• Jason graduates from SRHS in June '95, and starts at Santa Rosa Junior College in Sept '95, cutting back from 20-30hrs/wk down to 15-20hrs/wk at Cooperstown. 
   

1996:

• After a year at Junior College, Jason starts commuting in late '96 to San Francisco several days a week to attend Academy of Art University -- Jason cuts back to about 8-12hrs/wk at the store at this point. Ryan starts to work more at the store in Jason's absence.   Neil also starts working occasionally at Cooperstown (now ~13/14yrs old)

1997

• Jason gets a job at Mondo-tronics' Robot Store, and moves out to San Anselmo to be closer to new Robot Store job and college in the city.  Jason basically stops working at Cooperstown at this point -- just occasionally for a few hours here and there.
   
• This is around the time when we moved again at Mission plaza, back down to a smaller configuration to save on rent/expenses?  (~1000sq ft?)
   
• Ryan graduates high school and starts working a lot more (20-30hrs/wk) at Cooperstown, holding down the fort with Mom/Dad. 

1998

• We sell Cooperstown to another family, who keeps it in business for a few more years.... Do we know what year they finally closed down the shop, or what came of it eventually?  I forget?