Cards and Comics Finds Long Term Niche Market in North Potomac

Most hobbies don’t often become profitable ventures, but Gus Vellios has managed to turn his hobby of collecting cards and comic books into a successful business.

A collector since his youth, Vellios began spending his weekends renting a table at area card shows and auctions while a student at the University of Maryland. That was 20 years ago. In 1995, he opened C&C Cards and Comics in Potomac Valley Shopping Center in North Potomac.

Vellios works full time with the federal government but his parents, Peggy and Chris, mind the store in his absence. Seventeen years in the card memorabilia world has made them experts, too.

The store’s customer base is about half for the comic books and half for the sports cards. “It is like two completely different worlds,” said Peggy Vellios, “the customers are either card collectors or comic collectors, but rarely both.”

Contrary to popular belief, about 97 percent off comics customers are adults, she said.

“If you think comics are for kids, they aren’t," Vellios said. "We have very few kids coming in for comic books these days.”

The sports card collectors (football, baseball, hockey and basketball) tend to specialize in a particular sport but there are a few who might collect multiple sports, added Vellios.

The last year has had some memorable moments for C&C when they had not one but two one-of-a-kind cards from boxes sold at their store. A customer found a 1 of 1 signed Reggie Bush card in one of the boxes sold here. A few weeks later another customer found a 1 of 1 signed Vince Young card. Both cards sold at auction for thousands of dollars. Vellios laughed recalling the famous finds and said people wondered “how it was possible that the same store had both of these cards.”

The latest kids’ craze in card collecting is Yu-Gi-Oh trading cards. C&C sponsors Saturday weekend Yu-Gi-Oh card game tournaments where kids pay a small fee to register to play the card game against other kids and have a chance to win prizes. The tournaments have been successful with 10-20 kids in attendance on any given weekend.  

In addition to cards and comic books, C&C has an assortment of collector’s memorabilia including hats, jerseys, action figures, pennants and collector’s supplies for storage and display.

C&C has managed to survive, and even continue to thrive, in the current weak economy, Vellios said. Bob Trimble, a new customer from Gainesville, Va. said that he was glad to have recently stumbled upon C&C because “there are certainly not many stores like this where I am from in Northern Virginia.”

“We have been here a long time and people from all over get to know us,” said Vellios.

Over the years, C&C has acquired a wide customer base with customer orders from as far away as Luxembourg, Azerbaijan, Afghanistan.

“But we have good prices, which is what I think has kept us around so long,” she said.