Six Years of J&J's, and a Best of the Best Award

J&J’s started in February 2020, which turned out to be the strangest possible month to start anything. Jen Roberts was helping her father clear out inventory from the small card shop he ran alongside his full-time job. She set up a Facebook page to move it, got her own license, and the thing kept going after the inventory ran out.

Six years later it won the Times Leader’s Best of the Best award in the sports cards and memorabilia category.

The shop before the shop

Roberts grew up around cards. Her father’s shop was never the main job, it was the thing he did because he could not help himself, and she spent her childhood in the middle of it. She is also a lifelong athlete, which matters more than it sounds when your customers want to talk about a player for twenty minutes before they buy anything.

That background is why the catalogue looks the way it does. It is not built from whatever a wholesaler had available. It is built by someone who knows which signature a Phillies fan actually wants.

Growing by word of mouth

The early months were slow. What changed it was people telling other people, which in the Wyoming Valley still works better than advertising. Roberts credits the wider boom in sports collecting too, and the arrival of players like Aaron Judge who pulled a new group of buyers into the hobby.

She has since left her full-time job to run J&J’s properly. The business runs with her spouse, her mother and her in-laws involved, which is roughly the definition of a family business rather than a marketing line about one.

What the award actually measures

Best of the Best is voted on by readers. That makes it a popularity contest in the most literal sense, and in this case that is the point. A memorabilia dealer lives or dies on whether people in the area trust them, because the entire product category depends on believing that the signature is real.

“Everything we do is community-driven; our friends supporting us means so much.”

That is Roberts on the award, and it lines up with where the shop puts its money. The charity work is not a marketing programme bolted on afterwards.

What is next

A brick-and-mortar store, hopefully within the next year, with downtown Pittston in mind. Six years of selling online has proved the demand exists. A counter you can walk up to is the obvious next step for a business built on people trusting who they are buying from.

Until then, everything is in the online catalogue, and you can ask us to source something specific if you do not see it.