When he got started in the sports cards business 30 years ago, Scott Pierce said he was only selling cards as a part-time side business in Southlake.

But after 10 years, he said he decided to take his business full-time and move into a shop on Northwest Highway in Grapevine. He has been there for the past 20 years.

Jim Gibbs, who has come to SMP Sports Cards Plus for about a decade, was one of the customers looking through the shop’s merchandise on an afternoon in May. Gibbs, who said he prefers vintage cards, was looking at some Mickey Mantle baseball cards.

He lives in Grand Prairie, but he comes to the shop because Pierce “has the best prices, and he’s always fair,” Gibbs said.

“It’s well-worth the drive to come over, though,” he said. “There are not a lot of card shops around anymore.”

Although other card shops have gone out of business or struggled to make money, Pierce said he has striven to adjust to the times and maintain his relationships with his customers to keep bringing in profits.

“The internet really hasn’t hurt our business because I am so customer service-oriented that people will come in here, and even if they have to pay me a little bit more [for the card], they will just because of our bond.”

Part of why Pierce said many other shops have had difficulty remaining in business is because they have stopped catering to the children who want to get into the card-trading hobby.

“The majority of the people in this business don’t see it that way, and it’s unfortunate,” he said. “They just see it as more work and no money.”

He also works with the Boy Scouts of America.

“I work with the Major League Baseball Association, and we throw parties for the Boy Scouts so they can get their collector badges,” he said. “We’re the only shop that does that in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.”

Pierce said he has gotten the opportunity to handle some interesting items over the years. He said one of the “coolest” items he has handled was a check that was signed by both Babe Ruth and Ruth’s wife. That check sold for $4,000.

He was also part of the sale of a Kris Bryant 2014 Bowman Superfractor card that his customer sold for about $15,000 after pulling it “out of a $3 pack,” Pierce said.

If he had to pick a favorite type of merchandise, though, he said he would go with the vintage cards. He said the baseball cards from the ’30s through the ’50s never go down in value and only keep increasing in worth over the years.