New Lexington sports card shop aims to be part museum and ultimate community hangout
Long displaced from his home state and finally back in the Bluegrass for good, Jimmy Mahan looks around his new shop and thinks back on the origins of the idea that created it.
“What can we do to make this special?” he says.
This is Jimmy’s Kentucky Roadshow, a sports card and memorabilia shop just a baseball’s throw down Romany Road from Wheeler’s Pharmacy and a few streets over from where Mahan grew up. But this, in Mahan’s mind, is so much more than that. To University of Kentucky sports fans like himself, it’s a shrine of sorts. And he wants to share it with everybody.
The walls are adorned with Wildcats relics that Mahan has accumulated throughout his adult life, some as a fan and collector, some specifically for this new endeavor. The first thing visitors are likely to notice when the shop opens Nov. 4 is what’s under their feet: a large chunk of the original Rupp Arena court — the painted blue baseline, with “Kentucky” in big white letters — stretched across one entire side of the store. “You walk in on history,” Mahan says excitedly.
A closer inspection unveils a wealth of UK sports treasures.
Antoine Walker’s game-worn “denim” jersey from the Cats’ 1996 Final Four win over John Calipari’s UMass team. A game-worn Olympic jersey belonging to Tayshaun Prince. The black jersey Patrick Patterson wore in the home game honoring the late Mr. Wildcat, Bill Keightley. A pair of size 20 shoes worn by Karl-Anthony Towns. One wall of the shop features the “South Regional Champions” banner that hung in the Superdome, looking down on the 2012 Wildcats as they won a national title. On the adjacent wall hangs a Kentucky football pennant from the 1950 Orange Bowl featuring legendary names like Claiborne and Parilli.
That’s a small sample of what’s in store at Lexington’s newest sports shop. And then there’s the cards. Cases and cases of cards from all sports across all eras. One case features a 1933 Babe Ruth card in one corner and a brand-new Lynn Bowden autographed card in the other.
Mahan’s mantra for this place: “Part shop. Part museum. All community.”
Back home in Kentucky
Mahan, 44, grew up in Lexington and was a student at Henry Clay before moving to Virginia to finish high school. He settled in North Carolina after college and has lived in that state for most of his adult life.
His father has made a successful career in banking. Mahan had a hand in some of that success, but finance wasn’t his passion. He’s spent a large chunk of his career as an educator, working primarily with children. He’s been a public school teacher, a principal, a youth camp counselor. He actually moved back to Lexington about 20 years ago and spent a year as an academic adviser for UK Athletics, a job that included working closely with the men’s basketball team during the Tubby Smith era.
But educating kids was where he felt most at home professionally, and sports cards have always been a personal passion.
Around this time last year, Mahan’s worlds intersected after he pulled a highly valuable card featuring the autographs of Duke stars and NBA rookies Zion Williamson and R.J. Barrett. Rather than keep the card or flip it at a major profit for himself, Mahan decided to sell it on eBay and donate the money to the Crossnore School, a North Carolina foster home for abused children where he and his wife once worked. “Those kids needed that money more than us,” he said last week, sitting in his new shop, still a work in progress with the opening right around the corner.
One key piece that has yet to make its appearance — but will by next week, Mahan promises — is a Raleigh News & Observer photograph of John Wall throwing down a two-handed dunk in the early minutes of UK’s win over North Carolina. It was Calipari’s first season as Kentucky’s coach, and Mahan was at the game. He had the photo enlarged, and he got Wall to sign it.
“Living in Carolina, you can’t imagine the crap I got for the last 20 years. I cannot stand UNC after living there 20 years,” he said with a smile. “So that picture is front and center in the shop.”
A booming industry
Asked what brought Mahan back home to Lexington, he smiles again and extends his arms. “It was this,” he says of his new shop.
There was a nice spot open not far from where he grew up, and the sports card world is enjoying its biggest boom in decades. Seemingly every week brings another national trend story of sports cards emerging as a hot commodity, both among longtime collectors, those who used to collect and are rekindling that passion, or people new to the hobby.
Card shops like the ones Mahan is opening are seeing stock fly off the shelves. Retail giants like Walmart and Meijer are seeing customers waiting for cards to be stocked just so they can buy them in large quantities and, in a lot of cases, flip them for higher prices on eBay and other online outlets.
Mahan is hoping to cater to people who are in it for the love of collecting, and he’s setting a place at his table for everyone, from the young kids who just want some cards of their sports heroes, to adults just getting into the hobby, all the way to the super-serious collectors who won’t bat an eyelash at dropping thousands of dollars on a single card. There will be everything from dollar packs to $5 packs to boxes that cost hundreds of dollars.
Sitting in the shop, Mahan starts to tell a story that gets to the core of why he’s doing this. He pauses: “There’s a point to this. I promise.” His business partner, David Dimenstien, guffaws knowingly from the back room, a dual acknowledgment of Mahan’s tendency to ramble when he gets going about cards (or UK sports, or anything else he’s passionate about). Long story short, Mahan is opening Jimmy’s Kentucky Roadshow because he wants a place for people to get together, share stories, talk about cards and sports and life, and — if they want — open some packs.
“To me, it’s about social engagement,” he says. “And just the positivity. I know you have a lot of investors in this, and I get it. I worked in finance. And I know why they’re in it. But don’t lose the base joy of doing this. … You can come in here and spend 10 bucks a year. Fine. Come in and tell some good stories, hear some good stories. Meet some people.
“And it’s definitely about the kids, and that outlet and what the hobby has brought to me — a lot of joy. But you also have old guys like me, who — we did this when we were kids and we got so much fun from it. And now it’s coming back, and you can get back in it.”
Opening amid a pandemic
Obviously, this is not the ideal time to start a shop with a primary goal of getting people together.
We’re still in the midst of a pandemic, with COVID-19 cases on the rise yet again, and mask and social distancing directives having an effect on everyday lives.
Mahan acknowledges the timing, and he says he’s taking all precautions to keep people safe. A couple of weeks before opening day, there was already a sign affixed near the front door advising customers to wear masks and remain at a distance from each other. Mahan says they’ve checked into the store’s maximum capacity — it’ll be seven — and they have plans to set up social-distancing guidelines outside if any more than that show up at one time. The shop’s first autograph session is already planned for the afternoon of Nov. 6 — with PJ Washington as the special guest — but, instead of just opening up the shop to anyone who wants to stop by, Mahan is selling time slots for the event online to make sure there’s not too big of a crowd all at once.
His ultimate dream of a community hangout with cards as the backdrop will have to wait a little while longer, but Mahan is looking at the shop as a long-term endeavor and says he’s built to last through the pandemic.
There is already a website — KentuckyRoadshowShop.com — that he says has thrived over the past few months as collectors have shifted even more toward buying cards online.
Once things get back to normal, the real party begins.
Mahan envisions trade nights, in-store box breaks and get-togethers before, during and after Kentucky games. He’ll put together more autograph sessions that bring some former Wildcats back to town to sign cards and memorabilia and meet UK fans. And, who knows, with the NCAA looking to change its rules on college players’ ability to profit off their names while in school, there could be some current Cats signing autographs at Jimmy’s Kentucky Roadshow a year or two down the line.
“I just think you have to be creative,” he says of starting up during COVID-19. “But we can do it. In the meantime, we’ll do everything that we have to to keep everybody safe.”
A kid at heart
Mahan explains this plan for the future while sitting at one of the shop’s unique features: the “card bar,” as he calls it. It’s quite literally a bar — built specially for this store — and just beneath the transparent surface sits a wide assortment of cards and other memorabilia, much of it related to UK sports. No alcohol will be consumed here. “This is way better than alcohol!” Mahan exclaims, grinning widely as he looks forward to swapping stories with customers and seeing them open their packs on the wooden bar.
Behind the bar sits the shop’s other employee, Trey Huntsman, a UK grad who covered the baseball team for Kentucky Sports Radio and hosted a college baseball podcast. He connected with Mahan through the online card community, and the two became friends. Huntsman moved back to Lexington to be a part of the new venture and shares Mahan’s vision for a community hangout.
“This was an opportunity to do something where I could be creative and be myself and be back in Lexington and feel at home,” he said. “And that community aspect really extends to the little family that we have here, which is all of us, our wives, our families — and it’s something special. And it’s one of those things that you have to be in here to really understand.”
Looking out the storefront window facing Romany Road are two specially built smaller tables for customers, especially kids, to open packs. The surface of those tables happens to be the old court at the Joe Craft Center, and Mahan smiles yet again at the thought of a kid ripping open a pack and getting, say, a John Wall, who once practiced on that same court.
Though this will be a place for adults to hang out and talk sports, the shop — at its heart — will be a spot for a new generation to fall in love with the hobby.
Mahan is already compiling a box of inexpensive cards featuring former UK players to give away for free to kids who visit the store. He listed a flurry of other still in-the-works ideas, like a program where if a kid reads a certain amount of books over the summer, they can come in and get some free cards. Or a “Card Trail” — think the Kentucky Bourbon Trail — where they can visit several shops around the region, get a card stamped at each stop, and bring it back to his shop for some kind of free memorabilia. It gets more people collecting, and it spreads business to other independently owned stores.
Mahan often travels to other card shops in the region and has an active YouTube channel partially dedicated to highlighting those businesses. He says he hopes to work with other shops in the area, like Baseball Card Warehouse off Clays Mill Road, not act as competition.
“I’ll figure out what I’m going to give you. A jersey, whatever,” Mahan says of the “Card Trail” plan. “But you’re going to have so much fun going to different kinds of shops, and then come back here. Awesome. What a cool thing.”
Standing on the sidewalk outside, Mahan points in the direction of nearby Ecton Park and says the shop hopes to sponsor a Little League team next year. He’s talking about looking forward to seeing parents bring their kids by and watching adults reignite their interest in collecting when an older man walks up and asks if the store is open yet. He says he has some old cards to show off. Mahan beams as the man walks away after promising to return in a couple of weeks.
“I can’t wait,” he says, counting down the days until Nov. 4, when he’ll get to hear stories from the old-timers and see the kids’ smiles when they open a pack and find their favorite player. “That feeling — that face that people make — was just like when I was teaching and somebody got it. And they light up. That never gets old. There’s no law of diminishing returns on that. It’s always as cool as the first time when you create that with somebody. And I love that. I think that’s the best.”
More on Kentucky.com
Visit our website to read about some of the valuable and not-so-valuable cards of former University of Kentucky stars Jimmy Mahan is offering for sale online and for viewing or trading in his store.
This story was originally published October 28, 2020 at 7:47 AM.
