By Bianca Javate
Medill Reports
Scott Beatty was 17 years old when he first stepped foot in AU Sports Memorabilia, Chicagoland’s oldest purveyor of sports collectibles.
He worked part-time at the store alongside the owner’s sons, Bruce and Steve, with whom he was childhood friends.
“I was their first employee,” Beatty said. “I worked a couple days a week while I was in college, did that for a couple years, but I was a collector too. I probably spent half my pay on cards.”
Today, Beatty, 62, owns the store.
Currently based in Morton Grove after more than two decades in Skokie, AU Sports Memorabilia was founded by Eddie and Audre Gold in 1980, born from the couple’s shared love for baseball. Eddie Gold was the author of several baseball books as well as a sportswriter for the Chicago Sun-Times.
The Gold family owned the business until the death of their son Steve in 2010. Afterward, Beatty took over and bought it.
Beyond baseball, AU Sports Memorabilia sells anything a sports fan desires, from trading cards to signed balls, pucks, jerseys, photos, magazines, caps — you name it.
Beatty sources products from wholesale manufacturers of sports collectibles, and the store also has a “buy and sell” model through which anyone can come in to potentially sell memorabilia from their collection. Beatty offers a price, and if they agree on it, he resells the item through the store.
The price range, according to Beatty, “could be as low as 10 cents and as high as, you know, $5,000 or more.”
The most expensive item recently sold was a set of four baseball cards from the late 19th century, purchased by a private collector for $150,000.
“It really depends on what you have,” he said. “I have a Mickey Mantle rookie card that I’m asking $30,000 for, so there’s a big range.”
But when a customer comes in looking for something that’s not available, Beatty refers them to another store for free. No strings attached.
“If I don’t have the product, call over there because I want you to get what you want,” he said. “We do a lot of trade business with other stores in the area.”
You want a Scottie Pippen signed jersey? There’s a place in Highland Park for that. A specific kind of boxed set? Try Chicagoland Sports Cards in Buffalo Grove. Beatty said he doesn’t see these stores as competitors, because they’re all far away from one another and carry a variety of products. At the end of the day, he said, it’s all about the hobby.
This kind of mentality is why the business has successfully embedded itself within the community of avid sports fans in the area. AU Sports Memorabilia has managed to stay in business for so long because of the trust and relationships they’ve built with customers. Some have been shopping the business for decades, citing AU Sports Memorabilia’s “gold standard” customer service as the reason they keep returning.
Gayle Pearlstein said she discovered the store 11 years ago and has bought a Sandy Koufax ball, a Gale Sayers football and a few baseball cards from Beatty.
“Everyone is always nice and helpful,” Pearlstein said. “Very easy and nice people, fair prices and good quality, great customer service.”
Her sentiment was shared by another customer, Thomas Shaughnessy.
Shaughnessy said a friend recommended the store to him. He visits at least once a month for both the goods and the atmosphere.
“Main reason I like it there is (it’s) always fun to talk sports with everyone, and they’ve never failed to find me what I want,” he said.
His favorite purchase was an Alexa Bliss bobblehead, which he got at the end of April, along with different baseball and football rookie cards bought over time.
Despite the great reviews and customer experience, running a sports memorabilia store is not the “cash cow” some assume it to be. The store’s annual revenue is spread across on-site (store and pop-up events) and online (eBay and Beckett marketplace) sales.
Beatty estimates an annual revenue of $300,000 to $400,000, but that’s dependent on several factors, such as the success of local teams, the economy and competition from big-box retailers, like Target.
The impending tariffs are also a point of consideration, posing a threat to small businesses like AU Sports.
“Small businesses that appeal to higher-income buyers can probably get through this tumultuous period, while businesses that offer products and services that tend to get cut first during a downturn — for example, personal care — might see a tougher few months,” said Yelena Maleyev, a senior economist at KPMG.
Beatty has a rough idea of how tariffs could impact his sales, since the COVID-19 pandemic had a similar effect. The cost of supplies from China, where most of the store’s products and packaging are made, increased — pushing him to raise his prices.
“There was still a demand but not much supply,” he said. “If my wholesale prices go up, I will have no choice but to raise prices for the duration. We did that in 2020, and eventually, the prices fell back to where they are now.”
However, the pandemic was unexpectedly good for AU Sports Memorabilia. According to Beatty, being stuck at home allowed people to rediscover old hobbies. He said revenue that year was comparable to, and maybe even better than, what he made during sales booms after the Cubs and Blackhawks won national championships in 2016 and 2015, respectively.
Market Decipher, a market research and consultancy firm, projects a 707.143% increase in the global sports memorabilia and trading card market from 2024 to 2034. This equates to a growth from $33.6 billion to $271.2 billion, thanks to the hobby’s promotion on digital platforms and collectibles becoming huge investment assets.
Fanatics recently signed seven-time Formula 1 champion Lewis Hamilton to an exclusive multi-year deal, opened a flagship store in London and was responsible for the 2024 craze surrounding MLB pitcher Paul Skenes’s 1-of-1 rookie card. The card was pulled by an 11-year-old collector from a Topps Chrome Update box produced by the company, and it sold for $1.11 million at an auction.
Collectors have scoured the market and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on boxes that could potentially carry Skenes’s card. The retail price for each box went from approximately $175 to $350-$400, which was a key contributor to Beatty’s holiday sales. Moments like this are good for memorabilia stores, but Beatty said he worries the hobby has lost its essence.
“When you’ve got 8-year-old kids saying, ‘Where are your grading cards?’ or ‘How much would this card be worth?’ … you’re looking at it like a money thing. You’re not even having fun with this,” he said.
Beatty hopes as business continues to grow, children and collectors alike rediscover the beauty of the hobby, the innocence it carries and the memories it creates.
“Saturday and Sunday afternoons with a dad and his kid, one after the other,” Beatty said. “We want to keep the homey aspect of our business and keep it at a point where they can afford to keep coming to us.”
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Bianca Javate is a graduate journalism student at Medill, specializing in sports media with a concentration in business. You can follow her on Instagram @biancajavate and see the rest of her work on biancajavate.com.