For Todd Wanek, what started as a childhood hobby has become a brick-and-mortar business serving Bossier City’s collectors, with Quality Time Sports Cards.

After more than five years of steadily buying, selling, trading, and building relationships within the collecting community, Quality Time Sports Cards offers a wide selection of sports cards, hosts card shows, participates in major events such as the Dallas Card Show, and continues expanding its online presence.

“I feel we’re a small market, population-wise, but we have an extremely healthy, active card community,” Wanek said.

Wanek’s return to collecting coincided with a broader resurgence in the hobby. When he picked it back up around 2018, he initially found himself relearning almost everything he thought he knew about sports cards.

Like many collectors returning to the hobby, Wanek turned to online videos to learn about the modern market. Videos on card breaks — a live-streamed event where a host opens sealed boxes or cases of trading cards for a group of buyers who purchase a claim to a specific team, players, or portions of the cards pulled — got him hooked. He began buying boxes, participating in breaks, attending shows, and gradually becoming more involved.

Attending a Dallas-area card show in late 2019 showed him there was far more to collecting than simply buying cards for a personal collection.

“I noticed there was a whole business side to collecting cards,” Wanek said. “There’s card dealers, and people would walk around with their own cards to sell, buy, and trade all right there.”

That realization changed the direction of his hobby. 

As Wanek accumulated cards, he began selling them and leveraged the proceeds to buy additional cards or boxes. He spent more than five years gradually building his inventory and customer base before opening the store.

“I was only able to buy a couple cards here or there. It grew to the point where I could buy a collection from somebody, and it would give me inventory to have a table at a show,” Wanek said. “And then rinse and repeat.”

Operating largely out of his home, the need for a store grew with his collection and inventory. 

“I felt like I was kind of plateauing on the growth of my business,” he said. “I felt like the only thing that could make me kind of still grow was having a shop.”

Wanek knew what he wanted the store to feel like because he had spent years watching collectors shop at shows. He specializes in selling “singles” with a healthy selection of various sports and athletes. In addition to cards displayed in cases, Quality Time Sports Cards features what Wanek calls “pick-through boxes,” containing a large selection of cards at a variety of price points.

“I’m a big singles guy,” he said. “My goal is that every time somebody comes in here, there’s new fresh singles for them to look at.”

That constant turnover is part of what Wanek enjoys most about the business. Collectors are continually bringing cards into the store, while other customers are hunting for new additions.

“It’s very active. We have a lot of regulars, a lot of repeat customers,” he said. 

One of the qualities Wanek believes sets Quality Time Sports Cards apart is the way it buys cards from customers.

Wanek tries to make the process transparent by letting customers see how they value cards and let the seller decide how they want to make a deal. That approach is about more than making a sale; it’s about building relationships that keep collectors coming back.

That philosophy appears to be resonating. Although the store had only been open for about eight months, Wanek said it already had a strong base of repeat customers.

“We offer full transparency,” he said. “I’ll show you online what we’re basing our offer on. The honesty comes through.”

To keep that momentum, Wanek is embracing how sports card collecting has evolved over the years. 

Quality Time Sports Cards is hosting its own shows, like the Oct. 31 show at the Bossier Civic Center in Bossier City and has expanded into online streaming platforms including Whatnot and Loupe. 

For Wanek, the online side of the business is an important avenue for reaching collectors beyond Bossier City and giving customers another way to discover the store’s inventory. The store also has a dedicated space where live streams take place.

“It is a slow grind for online,” he said. “It takes a while to get traction, but that is part of the card collecting world now.”

He has also expanded his scope to offer official memorabilia that is professionally framed and certified through Fanatics, JSA, and PSA. 

At its core, however, Quality Time Sports Cards remains a local business built around relationships. And for someone who returned to a childhood hobby to discover an entirely new world, that community may be the most rewarding part of all.

“People come in daily, and to see them get excited when they get a big hit or pull, it gets me excited,” Wanek said.

Quality Time Sports Cards is located at 4116 on Airline Drive in Bossier City. For more information or to see their stream schedules on Whatnot and Loupe, find them on Facebook.