Brennen Sutton’s goal is to extend his love and passion for sports to his community.
Sutton recently opened Logical Collectibles in Linden, selling sports cards and memorabilia — a hobby he’s gradually picked up in the last 15 years, first finding some cards at a flea market in 2008.
“I bought one and I’ve been hooked ever since,” Sutton said in his shop on Friday afternoon.
Sutton started buying cards at Wal Mart in 2010 and taking the hobby more seriously in 2015 when he realized he could make money doing it.
In 2016 he started setting up at flea markets in Crawfordsville and Lafayette and had a booth at Trader Bucks starting in 2019, before opening in Linden this summer.
The ability to value what a card is worth is a process, and one learned over time for Sutton.
“A lot of eBay browsing and hands-on learning,” he said. “I bought a guys’ collection back in February of 2019. 80,000 cards and through the research of going through all that, I kind of learned this is what’s valuable and this is what’s not valuable from the early 90s.”
Sutton was first attracted to cards based on the information provided on the back. Constantly learning new stats and facts about baseball and football players on each team in both the MLB and NFL.
“What started me out was reading the stats on the back,” he said. “Where they’re from, what birthday do they have. One guy I started following early in his career was Drew Brees, because he was from Purdue and I wanted a local guy to root for that wasn’t ‘so local.’”
The sports card industry has changed a lot over the years with a recent spike in interest.
“Now a days, everybody in the hobby wants that next big card that’s going to get them rich down the road,” Sutton said. “Some of the packs now a days are guaranteed to have an autograph in it or you’re guaranteed a serial number card and they range from anywhere between ‘Opening Day’ which is $2 a pack all the way up to ‘Flawless’ which is $2,000 a box now for 10 cards and you’re guaranteed autographed and memorabilia which includes players’ jerseys. And then you’ve got everything in between.”
And Sutton hopes to share that growing passion with the community.
“I’d love to see a whole lot more community interaction with it,” he said. “I host trade nights the second Thursday of the month, and I’m hoping to get the community involved so we can teach the younger generation of what baseball was, what baseball is, what football was, what football is and everything in between with all the sports.”
Sutton has cards ranging in price from a penny all the way to over $100.
Logical Collectibles is located at 220 S. Main Street in Linden, open Thursday and Friday from 11 a.m. - 5 p.m. and Saturday’s from 9:30 a.m. - p .m.
