Fifty-Two 80's: A Totally Awesome Shop

Vintage wax packs, Garbage Pail Kids, retro Broncos cards, and old Pokemon finds inside a totally-80s time capsule on Denver's South Broadway antique row.

CRT televisions loop vintage commercials while Care Bears stare down from the shelves — walking into Fifty-Two 80's on South Broadway is less like entering a store and more like teleporting into a 1985 bedroom. For card collectors, this Denver antique-row gem hides a genuinely great niche: unopened vintage wax packs and non-sports trading cards you simply won't find at a modern hobby shop.

The trading card corner leans nostalgic on purpose. Think Garbage Pail Kids, sticker packs still paired with their 40-year-old chewing gum, oddball non-sports sets like Three's Company cards, and old-school wax from the junk-wax era and earlier. Google reviewers rave about the variety of old trading card packs, and Pokemon cards surface in the cases too — one visitor's husband walked out with Pokemon while she grabbed a Tenderheart Care Bear. Broncos fans get a bonus: the shop claims the largest vintage Denver Broncos collection around, making it a sneaky-good stop for retro NFL collectibles in Denver.

Everything around the cards is part of the charm — He-Man and Star Wars figures, Timex calculator watches, Electronic Football handhelds, retro board games — all curated by a single passionate owner and priced fairly enough that reviewers call it out by name. The shop holds a 4.8-star Google rating across roughly 850 reviews, which is elite territory for any collectibles store.

Time your rip session carefully: doors open Wednesday through Sunday only, generally noon to 6pm midweek, with earlier closes on Saturday (5pm) and Sunday (4pm), and Mondays and Tuesdays dark. Weekends get busy with the Broadway antique crowd, so a Wednesday or Thursday visit means unhurried digging — and first crack at whatever wax packs came in that week. Gift cards are available too, handy for the collector in your life who already owns everything — or at least everything from this decade.