Owner Jeff Brandyberry is the first to admit Collector's Cove in Mount Joy is not your average sports-card shop.
Shock and disbelief are not uncommon reactions among new customers, Brandyberry said. After all, how many shops that sell sports cards also deal in seashells?
'We have a challenge (for our customers),' he said. 'If they can find another store like our store. we'll give them one item of their choice in the store free. And we have yet to have any winners.'
Many customers can't understand the unusual mix, Brandyberry said. 'Then they take a look at the shells, and usually they can't believe the beauty and the colors and some of the other things that go with them.'
Brandyberry, 41, first became interested in seashells at age 6, when his grandmother came back from a trip to Florida with two paper bags full of seashells she had picked up along the shore.
'I started to take an interest in the shells,' he said. 'I wanted to know what they were, and so my grandmother bought me a book, and I started learning about them. And when I started learning about them, I wanted to get more seashells, and people just kept buying them for me. And we took (family) trips to Florida and New Jersey, collecting seashells.'
It began as a hobby. It turned into a business about 15 years ago, when Brandyberry began selling and trading seashells with fellow collectors from around the world.
He operated the business out of his basement until opening a shop in Elizabethtown five years ago. The shop dealt exclusively in seashells at first. But over the past four years, the business has expanded into other collectibles.
The business now includes a large selection of sports cards and other sports memorabilia. The shop sells display cases and other supplies for the seashells and sports items, along with Beanie Babies and original watercolors by a Lititz-based artist who also happens to be Brandyberry's sister-in-law.
The seashells range from specimen-grade shells for serious collectors to ornamental shells. Prices range from 50 cents to $1,200. The specimen shells come with information cards describing each species of seashell, where it was collected and even the depth of the water in which it was found.
Brandyberry imports the shells from suppliers around the world. He also collects them himself as often as he can. He has made collecting trips along the East Coast from Key West, Fla., to Maine. He even spent a week scuba diving for seashells off the coast of Belize in Central America.
Like most collectors, he was first attracted to seashells by their unusual shape and beauty, Brandyberry said. Later he became fascinated with other aspects of the hobby, such as the variety of scientific information associated with the shells and the different kinds of mollusks that inhabit them.
The hobby is not as popular as it once was. Less than a century ago, it was known as a hobby for kings and queens, Brandyberry said. Seashells were highly sought after. But today, there are probably between 5,000 and 6,000 serious collectors worldwide.
'It's a small number compared to other collectibles,' he said. 'The problem in seashell collecting is getting younger people involved in them, getting them to see the beauty and the value in shells. If you can't get the younger people to see that, you can't get them to collect them. It's that simple.'
Another reason for their decline in popularity is monetary, Brandyberry said. Unlike sports cards and other collectibles, seashells aren't generally viewed as having any real financial value for the serious investor.
'That doesn't mean there isn't (any monetary value). It just means that people don't believe it half the time,' he said. 'They don't believe that a shell could be worth $1,200.'
John Wolff, 66, of Manheim Township, has been collecting specimen-quality seashells since 1984. His collection runs from the microscopic to a snail shell from Australia that measures about three feet in length.
'I think we all have a desire when we're kids to pick up free stuff on the beach. It's like finding a treasure along the beach. Some of us, when we get older, try to get back to that,' Wolff said.
'But it's a tough business to be in, to try to make a living at it. There isn't all that much demand. And it's expensive to get the shells. The price of shells has gone way up since I've started collecting,' he said.
The combination of a seashell and sports-card shop does sound a little odd to Nathan Avery, owner of Bleacher Bums Sports Cards and Memorabilia in Willow Street. But the way he sees it, collectibles dealers have to sell whatever they can to stay in business.
'Sell what you can to make a living, that's what I say,' he said. 'If seashells sell for them, I'm glad they sell them. You have to sell things other than cards to stay alive anymore.'
Still, Collector's Cove isn't the oddest collectibles shop Avery has come across. He knows of a meat-market owner near Lancaster City who sells sports cards on the side.
'You should ask him about strange combinations,' Avery said.
