AA MINT CARDS: A state-of-the-art trading card store that turns collections into cash

The pandemic-era rediscovery of a cache of old baseball cards led to the birth of a new business for 19-year old Aaron Amarant. After rapidly becoming one of the largest and most respected trading card dealers on eBay, AA Mint Cards last month celebrated the grand opening of their first real-world, state-of-the-art location at 9630 Stirling Road in the new Cooper Square Plaza. In just a short time it has become the area’s premiere one-stop shop for the buying, selling, grading, and consignment of trading cards of all kinds, from sports, to Pokémon, Star Wars, Magic the Gathering, and beyond.

From Hobby To Business

“During quarantine my dad pulled out a safety deposit box and found a Topps Wayne Gretzky rookie card from when he was a teen,” said Aaron. “We got it graded and I sold it on eBay for a few thousand dollars. That’s when the light bulb went off.” Father and son decided to combine their expertise – dad knew card collecting, and Aaron knew eBay – and launch AA Mint Cards as an online store. It’s a competitive field, but the team has their ways of finding great inventory. Said Aaron, “We search for hid- den corners of the internet other people aren’t noticing, athletes we feel are undervalued, things like that. It’s finding your niche and expanding from there.”

Their approach has been astoundingly successful: Today, AA is an eBay “Top Seller” with over 4000 positive reviews and zero negatives. “We visited a trading card store in California, and people there recognized the brand from our t-shirts,” said Aaron. “Having that kind of worldwide reach is really cool.”

A Card Store For The 21st Century

When you think of a trading card or collectibles store, you probably imagine a bare-bones establishment with dusty display cases and haphazardly-displayed inventory of questionable origin. Aaron was going for… not that. “I love interior design and really wanted to celebrate the modern world of sports cards.” After going through dozens of possible floor plans, Aaron took inspiration from how trendy shoe stores – the collectible sneaker market has been insanely popular for many years now – use vertical space. AA’s 18’ walls are covered with custom transparent grids containing graded cards. Each grid has a QR code; scan the code, and you are taken to a website with complete information about every card in that grid, including images of the fronts and backs, population counts, and pricing. “It’s a unique and very cool interactive display that combines the best of the online and physical worlds,” said Aaron.

Coming soon are what may be the country’s first card collectible pack vending machines, which AA calls “Pack Zones”, as in End Zones, as they will be located near the entrances at both ends of the store. “The Pack Zones will contain more than 50 different kinds of card packs, selectable from a 42-inch vertically integrated screen,” said Aaron. “It’s unique to any store I’ve ever seen.”

Turning Your Collection Into Cash

AA Mint Cards is a PSA submission center and offers grading services from multiple companies. “Basically, anything and everything that’s baseball card-sized, we can have it valued in a way that is recognized internationally, which increases its real-world value,” said Aaron.

What does this mean for you? Well, you know that collection you’ve been sitting on for years, or that was inherited from a beloved relative? The one that’s been taking up space but doesn’t really have any sentimental value – or that needs to be trimmed down to your very favorites? AA Mint Cards can help you sort it, evaluate it, and sell it. Said Aaron, “We want to help people get liquidity from their collections.”

AA Mint Cards aims to transform the way South Florida trades collectible cards. “Whether you want to spend $1 or $50,000, we can get you started or expand your collection,” said Aaron. In the coming months AA plans to host trading nights in the covered outdoor patio behind the store. Said Aaron, “We want to foster the growth of the hobby and build a real community. We love to learn from our clients as much as we love to educate them.”

AA Mint Cards is located at 9630 Stirling Road, Cooper City, in the new Cooper Square Plaza across from Cooper City High School. Call 954.510.9600 or visit www.AAMintCards.com to learn more.