Derek Schultz: The card king

On a busy Saturday morning at his bustling sports-card shop, Indy Card Exchange owner Andy Albert stood on a chair to survey the scene unfolding before him.

“What a day!” Albert exclaimed, while shooting a video that would later land on Indy Card Exchange’s Instagram stories. “Indianapolis is alive and kickin’ in the hobby!”

Just 15 minutes into Topps International Trading Card Day, excited patrons were elbow to elbow, ripping open packs, thumbing through inventory and carrying factory-sealed boxes to the cash registers of the most prominent local card shop in the metro area. The big smile on Albert’s face matched that of a young Michael Jordan on a vintage cardboard cutout height chart, made famous by the movie “Home Alone,” which is prominently displayed in the East 96th Street business. Speaking of Jordan, a few collectors are parked at the custom-built card table in homage to him, featuring a tabletop with dozens of his lower-end, standard-issue cards from the 1990s.

Even on nonpromotion days, the past and present always intertwine at Indy Card Exchange, where generations of patrons consistently step through Albert’s door to pore over decades of collectible treasures—from MJ, to Mantle, to Mahomes.

Albert was once one of those happy customers. Along with countless others, he caught the sports-card collecting fever during the hobby’s major boom in the late 1980s. As a 9-year-old, the native of La Paz, about 15 miles south of South Bend, was gifted a box of 1988 Fleer basketball cards by his grandma, who knew he was a hoops enthusiast. The 132-card allotment included a third-year Michael Jordan card as well as rookie renditions for fellow Hall of Famer Scottie Pippen and Pacers legend Reggie Miller.

“That set also has one of the most iconic Michael Jordan cards, which is the All-Star card of him doing the free-throw-line dunk [in the 1987 Slam Dunk contest],” Albert said. “That’s one of my favorite all-time cards, and it’s been a passion ever since.”

That passion never subsided for Albert. As a student at tiny Taylor University in Upland, he frequented a local card shop in Gas City. “That love of the hobby stayed with me through college,” he said. “I’d also go to every card show I could find. I just wanted to buy cards or even talk to somebody about cards—I needed to feed that fire.”

Beginnings in the business

Albert, now 44, was into his 30s before he considered the possibility of getting behind the card-shop counter instead of in front of it. Following months of deliberation, he jumped in headfirst midway through 2012, purchasing the Indy Card Exchange, which had been in existence in some capacity for almost 20 years. The location was then in a compact and nondescript space in a Westfield Boulevard strip just north of the Jordan YMCA and south of East 86th Street.

“I saw such an opportunity in the Indianapolis area,” Albert said. “They had a great inventory already, so it was very turnkey for me.”

Buying an established location was still a calculated risk for Albert, who hung on to his full-time job during those early years, building up the business while falling back on the security of a stable source of income and health care benefits for his growing family. After paying off the bank note on the shop, Albert leaned fully into becoming a card kingpin, and the Indy Card Exchange has been his solo role since January 2017. Four years later, he moved the shop into its current digs on East 96th Street, a space several times larger than the previous location.

Just a few years removed from one of the hobby’s valleys, when the sports-card business crashed along with everything else during the economic recession of the late 2000s, it was no guarantee that Albert’s investment would be a lucrative one. But banking on Indy’s sports obsession was one of his main strategies for purchasing Indy Card Exchange, and that strategy continues to pay dividends.

“Indy is different because it isn’t a town that is just focused on one thing,” he said. “You have basketball fans here; you have football fans here; racing fans; even the soccer-card market and women’s sports have grown here. We are a sports-hungry town and always have been.”

To no surprise, the Colts drive the market, and, like Peyton Manning and Andrew Luck cards from the early years, Indy’s new rookie signal-caller seems to be the next obsession.

“I can’t tell you how many people are asking for Anthony Richardson cards, and there’s only one product that has Richardson in a Colts uniform,” Albert said. Once he was able to land that card, he posted it on the shop’s Instagram account last week, and it sold within five minutes.

“I got a direct message about that card from a diehard Colts fan,” he said. “It was just once sentence: ‘I have to have that card.’”

Taking off

Regardless of market, the sports-card hobby has trended way up in Albert’s now-11-year tenure at Indy Card Exchange. While he wouldn’t disclose specific numbers, Albert said he’s seen an increase in sales in 10 of the 11 years he has owned the business. The lone exception was the 2022 market correction after the craziness of the COVID peak in the hobby in 2021. But even last year, transactions at the Indy Card Exchange were up 30%, signaling that interest and activity among Albert’s consumer base are still flourishing.

The sports-card industry has especially exploded in the past five years, with a recent market valuation hovering around $13 billion, and forecasters predict substantial growth to an eye-popping $50 billion by 2032. While there is still a place in the hobby for the 10-year-old with 20 bucks in his pocket, the opposite end of the sports-card spectrum is routinely seeing six-figure (or more) auctions on prized Jordan inserts or high-end, “one of one” issues of today’s star athletes.

Even in what’s become a big-time business, the passion for Albert still goes back to creating a memorable experience for his customers. He sees it each day in his shop: the joy from a youngster celebrating a massive Shohei Ohtani pull on a pack he opened with his father, or the thrill from the antique collector who unearthed a 1948 Leaf Jackie Robinson rookie card worth thousands, randomly hidden in a cigar box she had purchased online for $3.

“Yes, we’re here to be profitable, but I care about the person more than I do the cardboard that we’re dealing with,” Albert said. “So to see that happiness, to know that’s changed somebody’s life—you know, we want people to understand we care about what they have and who they are. That’s what differentiates us from the standard brick-and-mortar shop.”

Some might have trouble navigating the constant change and sporadic volatility of a business that can sometimes mirror the stock market, but for Albert, nothing in the hobby can erase his smile.

“There’s the regrets, there’s the thrills, there’s the, ‘I sold it at the right time’ story, and there’s, ‘I should have kept it longer’ kind of stories, right?” Albert said. “But it’s always fun. It’s so much fun.”•

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From Peyton Manning’s peak with the Colts to the Pacers’ most recent roster makeover, Schultz has talked about it all as a sports personality in Indianapolis for more than 15 years. Besides his written work with IBJ, he’s active in podcasting and show hosting. You can follow him on X, formerly Twitter, @Schultz975.