Ryan Graham is living his childhood dream.
The 36-year-old Barnhart resident owns and operates Elite Collectibles, a sports and trading card business, which sells consignment items online, as well as new cards and collectible items in its store at 1258 Main St. in Imperial.
“I’ve been in the auction business for almost 12 years,” Graham said. “During the (COVID-19) pandemic in 2020, we had to move to online only auctions. I decided I wanted to pursue sports and trading cards. I’ve always wanted to own a card shop and decided it was time.”
Graham said his late father, Curtis Graham, fostered his passion for collecting trading cards.
“I used to collect baseball cards with my dad growing up,” he said. “He’d always get us each the same thing, and we’d open them together. The Dugout in Arnold was the only card store around, and I would use my allowance every week to buy Pokemon cards.”
Graham said he started holding online auctions in 2012 and previously owned a resale store in Imperial and an auction house in Arnold with a cousin.
When Graham started Elite Collectibles, he worked out of a building in south St. Louis County, but he moved the business to Imperial in November 2023.
“I grew up in Arnold and graduated from Seckman High School in 2005,” he said. “I love the area and wanted to be closer to home.”
The store is open from noon to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays.
However, the majority of Elite Collectibles business is through its online auction of consignment items, which are held at 6 p.m. on Tuesdays at elite-collectibles.com.
Typically, somewhere between 800 and 1,000 items are available during an auction, and the starting bid for most items is usually $1. Graham’s consignment rate starts at 12 percent and goes down to zero percent based on the selling price.
Graham said about 95 percent of the auction items sell each week, and he typically ships between 200 to 250 orders following each auction.
“We do not buy from the public,” he said. “If customers have items to sell we only take items on consignment for our nationwide online auctions. I would rather try to make the customer the most money possible instead of low ball them on their items. We currently have over 20,000 subscribers to our emails and keep growing each week.”
The storefront, which is in a shopping plaza off Imperial Main Street near the I-55 exit, is mainly a place for customers to drop off or pick up auction items.
However, Graham does sell new merchandise at the store, ranging from sports cards to Pokemon, Magic: The Gathering, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Dragonball Super and MetaZoo cards.
He also has a large collection of former St. Louis Cardinals catcher Yadier Molina cards, with numerous signed rookie cards.
Graham has cards that come with pieces of a bat used by Babe Ruth, a baseball-style card signed by former President William Howard Taft and cards with a hair follicle from former President Abraham Lincoln and one of the founding fathers, Alexander Hamilton.
Graham has at least one card on display that is not for sale – a Mickey Mantle baseball card. The card belonged to Graham’s father.
“I found it in his stuff and got it authenticated,” he said. “Most have yellow lettering (for the name); this one has white lettering for the name. That makes it more rare.”
Graham said because he has been in the auction and collectible business for a dozen years, he has built a good customer base of buyers and sellers. About half of Elite Collectibles’ consignment customers are from out of state.
He said it is fun to work in the collectible industry because of the various items he gets to see and help sell.
“If I was buying everything, I wouldn’t be able to afford some of the things that come through the auction,” he said. “We had a Babe Ruth card that sold for $2,000. I had a (former L.A. Laker star) Kobe (Bryant) card I sold for more than $8,000. I had a (UFC fighter) Conner McGregor card that sold for a little over $7,000. We get some pretty cool stuff in the auction.”
For more information, call 314-472-3220 or email info@elite-collectibles.com.