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Royal Collectibles
96-01 Metropolitan Avenue
Forest Hills, NY 11375
Tel: (718) 793-0542
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Turning the past into big money at Royal Collectibles
By Robert Covarrubias
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Nothing brings me more joy than driving through a neighborhood and discovering a new toy shop. Well, that was the situation with Royal Collectibles about two years ago. Actually, I was on a bus going through Forest Hills when this discovery happened. I was on my way home from an appointment staring out the bus window, bored out of my mind when I happened to catch a glimpse of one of my future stomping grounds. It was like the Angels themselves singing in my ear because to me finding a new toy shop is like finding a hundred dollar bill on the floor. The following day I caught a bus to Royal Collectibles and what I found was more than satisfying. They had just about anything that would interest a collector: trading cards, comic books, sports memorabilia, toys, wrestling belts, statues, busts, old toys and more. Since then they have moved to the bigger corner store on Metropolitan avenue and Selfridge street and recently acquired the empty store next door to make the shop EVEN bigger. Talk about good business, the owner, Mike Giordano a collector of ten years, especially of comics and sports memorabilia, particularly Yankee memorabilia, has been in this business for 12 years now with no signs of slowing down.
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When asked what his store’s specialty was he said, “Our strategy is to be diverse with the sports stuff, the comic related things, gaming, toys, action figures, Barbies, 50/50 sports and comic related.” Royal Collectibles carries Baseball memorabilia as far back as the 1950’s, comics as far back as the 1960’s and toys from the 1980’s to the present. Personally, I don’t know how he contains such self control as a collector, God only knows how I would be if I lived in his shoes.
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What I like about Royal Collectibles is that you could walk in there a week from your last visit and find new items that they’ve purchased from a collector looking to lighten their load. When asked about this Mike says, “Buying is what we focus the most on and with eBay now the selling is the easy part… it’s acquiring the older stuff that’s a little difficult.” And when asked if his collection is displayed at home he says, “I have two rooms in my house that look exactly like the store it’s amazing it’s almost the same layout.” As I looked around I noticed quite a few vintage items especially in the sports memorabilia department. I wondered, If I had money burning a hole in my pocket what might Mike suggest I spend it on? “Investment quality stuff, just anything old pre-1970’s whether its comics or the sports related stuff you know like Mickey Mantle baseball cards, Silver Age, Golden Age comics that’s the stuff that’s like money in the bank, guaranteed!, never to depreciate at least I try not to…encourage people to speculate with stuff, I mean I tell people to buy what they like if it gets any future value great! If not, at least you enjoy it.”
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As I’ve discovered making my rounds to all the different comic/toy memorabilia stores people are always looking for different things so I wondered what people in this neck of the woods were looking for, “Currently, any Yankee related stuff, rookie cards, autographs, old stuff, new stuff, its all flying right now…and then the comics are strong, they’ve made a big come back since the late 90’s, we’re selling more back issues than ever, trade paperbacks… a lot of people looking to complete their runs.”
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Sometimes I forget that memorabilia collecting isn’t limited to only comics, toys and sports stuff but trading cards as well and this is definitely apparent as you walk into their store. One of the first things you see is a wall full of trading cards and protective sheets and lets not forget the tournaments that Royal Collectibles hosts, Yu-Gi-Oh every Saturday and Magic the Gathering every Sunday. They draw 15-25 people for each tournament every week and the age range vary from ten to twelve year olds up to guys in their twenties and thirties. “Well, trading cards just took a hit because Fleer went out of business and they didn’t give Don Russ the licensing to make baseball cards next year so you only have two companies Topps and Upper Deck doing baseball cards so that’s going to greatly change that market for those two companies making products.” And if you have any doubt whether your trading card is worth any money they even appraise it for you. “Yeah, people just walk in with stuff and we just do that for free for the opportunity to take a look at some stuff and maybe find some nice old time things, and also because we have buy, sell and trade up on the awning we get a lot of people, I mean a typical weekend sometimes it’ll feel like a pawn shop you’ll get like 30 or 40 people coming in with things like old televisions and real straight up pawn shop type of stuff all kinds of things.” If you’re ever in the neighborhood drop on by and say hello to Mike or Chuck and tell them that Eternal Collector gave them a big thumbs up.
