Columnist Nickolas Butler’s son, Henry, finds a rare card during a visit to For the Hobby Sports Cards in Eau Claire as the business’s owner, Jordan Hagedorn, looks on.
Columnist Nickolas Butler’s son, Henry, finds a rare card during a visit to For the Hobby Sports Cards in Eau Claire as the business’s owner, Jordan Hagedorn, looks on.
On a recent Saturday afternoon, I stood in Jordan Hagedorn’s store, For the Hobby Sports Cards, at the site of the old Buroker’s Taxidermy, Bait and Tackle shop at 1721 Birch Street. The store was packed with fathers and sons, teenagers, and two women in their early seventies. A few neighborhood boys were milling around, flopping onto couches or peering at cards while they munched doughnuts. The atmosphere felt akin to a beloved barber shop or, for the older patrons, a tavern, as Hagedorn held court from behind a bank of glass display cases while kids talked about their favorite professional athletes and teams, or pointed at flashy packages of cards.
Three generations of patrons, all bedecked with wide smiles and a kind of excitement that almost emits a palpable vibration.
Hagedorn presides over the shop with the positivity and gleefulness of a man who is living his dream. That phrase, “living his dream”, might feel cliché, but with Hagedorn, you believe it. He exudes an infectious attitude of generosity and kindness. There is a pureness about his business approach, a benevolent mission. His goal from Day One was to create a sincere environment for fellowship, conversation, and a shared passion for sports and collecting.
“What a privilege it is to run this store,” he tells me one night, as my son and I lean over a display counter chock-full of boxes and packs of cards. “I created the card shop for the 10- or 12-year-old me. It’s safe. People are kind. This is like my Cheers. I collect for the love. I do this for the love.”
Hagedorn’s enthusiasm is inspiring. Here is a male role model, teaching boys (mostly boys) the kind of upstanding behavior that will mark them as good men, good citizens, good husbands, good fathers, good businesspeople. Here is an Eau Claire native who matriculated through Longfellow, DeLong and North and remembers the neighborhood surrounding his store from bright childhood memories. “I think it’s cool to be kind. It’s cool to be fair. It’s cool to take action. Look, there are a million ways to collect and the fun part is creating your own strategy and style. You’ve got to chase what you love, you know?”
The old bait shop also exudes a kind of cosmic woo-woo energy. Piles of not-yet curated cards threaten to spill on the floor. TVs broadcast sporting events. Kids whisper in reverential tones about their favorite players and cards. Adults who have long forgotten their childhood hobby come blinking through the doors like they’ve discovered some wormhole, some time machine back to their youth. When a friend of Hagedorn’s was updating some plumbing in the building, he discovered a newspaper from 1927 with a headline proclaiming, “Jordan’s Timely Sale” (of Overcoats.) Hagedorn took it as a sign, and why shouldn’t he? Talk to any professional baseball player and they’ll reference the baseball gods with the same reverence a Catholic priest extends to saints.
The first thing I remember buying with my own money were baseball cards. My grandmother would send me an allowance of five dollars in the mail, along with a brief, but heartfelt letter in her distinctive cursive, all scrawled in ballpoint pen. Then I rode my bicycle to the old Mobil gas station on Lexington Boulevard, or the hardware store in the Putnam Heights shopping mall and buy as many baseball cards as possible. Back home, I scoured over the cardboard rectangles, absorbing statistics and factoids as if through fingertip osmosis. Back around 1987, I could tell you where Kirby Puckett was born, or what Gary Gaetti’s favorite breakfast cereal was. Baseball cards were my currency and talismans. Long before the term “fidget-spinner” was introduced to the zeitgeist, baseball cards kept my childhood hands busy: collating, organizing and studying. And throughout my life with varying degrees of importance, baseball cards have always held some power in my imagination. Which is why it so rewarding to enter For the Hobby with my son in tow, and to share a common interest in cards, and sports.
On our last visit to the shop, my son “broke” (card lingo for “opening”) a 2021 Panini Chronicles box of football cards. For the uninitiated, trust me — ripping (more card-lingo for “opening”) packs of sports cards is exciting on the level of lottery tickets. Someone once told me you don’t buy lottery tickets to win money, you buy lottery tickets to dream of winning money. Ripping packs of cards is a similar phenomenon. There are odds at play. Some cards are more difficult to find. In many cases, the odds are practically insurmountable. But the odds aren’t always important when you can score a card of your favorite player, who might just be your hero. So, there was my son, opening a package of cards only to find an autographed Adrian Amos card (Amos plays strong safety for the Green Bay Packers). Hagedorn and I about lost our minds watching Henry land the card. Moments later, he ripped a pack that produced a Zach Wilson (quarterback for the New York Jets) Prizm Black Silver card valued in the hundreds of dollars. Hagedorn figures the odds of landing such a card are about one in every 150 boxes. Henry was tickled. Hagedorn was thrilled. I was tempted to open packs all night long. For a few hours, we were three friends utterly detached from responsibility, politics, money, or time.
“I’m having the time of my life,” Hagedorn said, smiling.
Butler is the internationally best-selling and prize-winning author of "Godspeed," “Shotgun Lovesongs,” “Beneath the Bonfire,” “The Hearts of Men” and “Little Faith." His books have been translated in more than nine languages and optioned by Hollywood for film and TV. He lives with his family south of Eau Claire on 16 acres of beautiful land. Follow him on Instagram at @wiscobutler or on Facebook or Goodreads.
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