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| Last March, he was mulling ways to remake the business when he stumbled upon the image again while surfing eBay. |
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| "It definitely turned on the light bulb," Holub said. Now Holub and partner Gary Alexanian are about to celebrate the grand opening of The Celebrity Art Gallery/WC Sports Cards, a new Walnut Creek business that combines a traditional sports card shop with an art gallery focused on portraits of athletes. The store, which has been open since June, may well be the only place in California to buy both a $1 pack of baseball cards and a $15,000 oil painting. |
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| "I think it's pretty much unique," said Rich Klein, a price guide analyst for Beckett, the publisher of sports collectibles publications. "I think it's a good idea, too, because the card hobby has certainly evolved and it's certainly harder to get people in just for cards than it used to be. |
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| Alexanian opened Walnut Creek Sports Cards on Newell Avenue in 1995. Holub, a businessman, became one of his most loyal customers and by January 2004 they became partners, hatching a plan to move the store to a new North Broadway location. |
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"My interest was to take the card shop to a higher level, a higher end," Holub said.
Such innovation is essential to survive in the sports card industry, said Scott Kelnhofer, editor of Card Trade, an industry publication. The number of sports collectibles shops in the United States has dropped from nearly 7,000 in the late 1980's to about 2,500, he said. Both Klein and Kelnhofer attribute the decline primarily to the internet. |
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| Smart retailers are surviving by diversifying their inventory, Kelnhofer said. Some have added items like comic books and games, and others host in-store events like autograph signings. The Celebrity Art Gallery/WC Sports Cards model is another good tactic, he said. |
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| "Hopefully what we're starting to see a little more of in our industry, on a gradual basis, is retailers becoming a little more savvy in the visual marketing part of a store," Kelnhofer said. "They're not just stacking boxes. |
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| Holub hopes the same ethos will make customers consider buying paintings a in addition to cards that will get tucked away and rarely viewed. |
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| "It's a lot different to be able to look at something like that on your wall everyday," he said. Browsing is encouraged at the store, which features a large sofa and a big-screen television. While Alexanian handles the sports card operation on a daily basis, he and Holub brought in Georgia Kuchen, a veteran of the East Coast art world and the wife of a basketball coach, to manage the gallery. |
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| "It's not snobby at all," she said, comparing her new customers with some of the crowds at her old fine art galleries. "It's an interesting clientele because they don't have any preconceived notions about what they should like." |
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| In the sports art world, an artist typically creates an original painting and a limited edition of signed prints. It falls to the distributors to arrange licensing approval from the sport, the team and the athlete. |
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| The bulk of the paintings currently on display are portraits of sport figures captured in dramatic moments by artist Stephen Holland. The Celebrity Gallery/WC Sports Cards has, through Holub's connections with distributors, managed to snag some desirable Holland works that now anchor the store. |
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| Kuchen showed off one such prized acquisition this week, a portrait of Mickey Mantle in the midst of a powerful swing. The original sells for $15,000, while signed prints are priced at $1,950. Except, that is, for print number seven: it goes for $3,500 because seven was Mantle's jersey number. |
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| Holub said, "For sports lovers, it's just a natural evolution to go from small toys to big toys." |
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