San Antonio's Oldest Card Shop Just Sold After 34 Years. Three Generations Are Staying.

Charlie DiPietro has sold Sports Cards Plus. After more than four decades working Texas card shows and 34 years behind the counter at 2251 Lockhill-Selma Road, San Antonio's oldest sports card store has a new owner and, shortly, a new name. The buyer is House of Cards and Collectibles, a New Orleans group whose ownership includes New Orleans Saints executive vice president and general manager Mickey Loomis.

The shop stays put. Same address, same building. The sign changes to House of Cards.

What actually transferred

The interesting thing about this sale is what did not change. DiPietro's son and longtime partner Jeff DiPietro stays. So does his grandson, Jordan Correa, and his granddaughter, Elizabeth Riddle. Three generations of the family remain behind the counter under new ownership.

That is not sentiment. It is the deal working correctly. What a 34-year-old card shop is worth has very little to do with the inventory on the shelves and almost everything to do with the things that do not appear on a balance sheet:

• Which local collectors will consign a five-figure card to you without a contract
• Which distributor rep picks up the phone when an allocated product is announced
• Who in town is quietly sitting on a vintage collection and will call you first when they finally sell it
• Which regular can be trusted on a buy and which one shows up with reprints

None of that transfers with the keys. It transfers with the people. Keeping the family on staff is how you buy the part of the business that is actually valuable.

The timing tells its own story

DiPietro opened the shop in March 1992, near the peak of the junk wax era, and kept it open through the crash that followed, through the 2000s when card shops closed by the hundreds, and into a boom that has made shop ownership desirable again. Sales hit a high in 2025, and the first six months of 2026 ran roughly 30 percent ahead of the same stretch a year earlier.

He is not selling because the business is struggling. He is selling because after 44 years in the hobby, it is finally worth what it should be worth.

That is the pattern showing up across the country right now. Shops that survived the lean decades are reaching retirement age at exactly the moment when buyers with real capital want retail footprints. Some of those buyers are chains. Some, like this one, are regional groups with sports-executive money behind them.

What it means for local collectors

If your shop changes hands, here is what usually shifts and what usually does not.

Usually shifts

Buy percentages. New ownership almost always re-examines what the shop pays on collections, and it frequently tightens. Consignment terms. Handshake arrangements from the old regime get written down, which is generally good for you but can feel colder. Product mix. A group with multiple locations buys centrally and stocks what sells across the whole chain, not just what sold in your zip code.

Usually does not shift

The staff you actually deal with. Especially here, where retaining them was clearly part of the plan. Show and break schedules, at least for the first several months. Pricing on singles, which is set by the same comps regardless of who owns the door.

The thing worth saying out loud

A card shop that lasts 34 years in one city is infrastructure. It is where a generation of collectors learned what a card was worth, got their first box, and found out that the guy behind the counter would tell them the truth about a bad buy. That does not scale, and it does not get rebuilt quickly when it disappears.

It is a genuinely good outcome that this one changed hands instead of closing. Not every shop of that vintage gets the option.