If you were ever a customer of Shinders, and have read at all the story of their demise, you may be curious what happened to the warehouse of goods that Shinders had amassed after nearly 100 years in business (the last ~20+ of which saw multiple locations around the metro area). Not surprisingly, it was sold at auction.
According to the article from the StarTribune.com, there were more than 5 million sports cards, figurines, magazines (including adult magazines), and comic books. No figure was provided for the amount raised through the auction–former owner Robert Weisberg had claimed that each truckload full of product was worth more than $1 million, and there were at least three truckloads. Wells Fargo had taken control of the company, with over $1.7 million due on two loans.
Unfortunately, per an article from SportsCollectorsDaily.com, the auctions were never widely advertised to the sports memorabilia industry–which means the auction probably didn’t go for nearly as much as it could have (although it was also well before the most recent boom in the market).
What happened to everything that did not sell?!
I bought anything of value from Steve the new owner of the warehouse (a packed vanful ) for about $5000. What I left behind was worthless but man there was a lot I left behind. Some gems I picked include 50 copies walking dead 1st Michonne over 500 RPG hardcovers every employee hold box (Dave from Burnsville box was amazing) untold loose magic and Pokémon packs tons of late 2000’s $50 and up sports cards nonsport gems Anna paquin X-men promo autograph (laying on the floor in the store bay 1 foot from my door
What’s curious is what wasn’t left Zero Sportscard wax Zero high end anything Zero Kirby Puckett autographs (what happened the 80 plus signed number 4 Puckett jersey is still a mystery) Zero vintage anything zero 1988 fleer bb factory sets ( we had 5000 plus of those) Zero big head UD bobbleheads ( we got stuck with untold thousands of those)
Turns out the best thing I nabbed were the 5000 comic book high mil mylars I still have some left and use them often