I've been collecting long enough to have caught the beginning of brick and mortar shops, and the boom and the several washouts that happen periodically.
And having lived near Boston and in between there and NY I've also been able to be a bit spoiled by the number of shops.
The good ones were plentiful, even early. Halls Nostalgia was my local shop, maybe a mile from the house, and close enough to walk to from school. Plus my first job was practically next door. I hung out there a lot, and learned a lot. There were a couple good shows a year, and a few other shops that were good. Some I got to some I didn't. Arlington at one time had three or four shops that sold cards.
And of course during the late 80's- early 90's boom, there were lots of shops. My drive home from work had 5 shops plus 4 big retail chains.
Only one shop is left as brick and mortar. And two of the big chains.
The shop that survived did it by using the internet and carrying other stuff. Much of it sports related but not all. They're also very good at moving dead inventory at the right time. Like when Curtis Martin left for the Jets they sold their entire stock of his cards to a dealer in northern NJ almost before the ink was dry on the contract using one of the early dealer to dealer websites. Win for both, they got a decent price for what just became unsaleable cards, and the NJ guy had a complete inventory before any of his competition.
They also use Ebay well. And while they don't carry every product they're great about ordering stuff.
And they're pretty nice.
The shop mostly has newer stuff, but they do sometimes have vintage cards they've picked up for someone. Usually those aren't on display.
Of the shops I used to go to, when things were booming about half were owned by people with hardly any hobby experience, and at least one with no hobby or retail experience. All they knew was cards were worth money and were the hot collectible. And Beckett was pretty much all they knew. Some were nice people, some less so. The clueless places were visited once every couple months just to see what they had stumbled across or what they were willing to sell cheap to raise money for the latest "must have " new product. Not bad if they came across a card from a set not listed in Beckett. They either assumed it was horribly rare and wanted an insane price. Like $50 for a Burger king Phillies set. Or if Beckett didn't list it it must be junk. a couple 49 Leaf in VG for .25 each.
Not many adventures like that left since the rise of Ebay.
Steve B
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