Baseball cards have a long and rich history in American culture, giving fans a connection to their favorite players and helping to document the evolution of the game. The small town of Raymond, New Hampshire is no exception, as residents there have had a passion for collecting and trading baseball cards for decades.
Some of the earliest known organized baseball card collecting in Raymond dates back to the late 1950s and early 1960s. Local teen Edward “Eddie” Taylor recalled starting his collection around 1958 at just 11 years old. He would purchase wax packs of cards from the local grocery store or variety shop for a few cents and hoped for stars of the day like Willie Mays or Mickey Mantle. Eddie amassed a large collection of over 1,000 cards by the mid-1960s and would often trade duplicates with his friends after school or on weekends.
Other kids in town also got bitten by the baseball card bug around this time. Brothers Robert and David Johnson started their collection in 1961. They had a paper route and would use their earnings to fill shoeboxes with cards. Their prized possessions included a 1960 Topps rookie card of future Hall of Famer Dick Allen. Down the street, the Miller brothers – Timothy, Matthew, and Andrew – would swap and trade cards almost daily in their backyard. The 1960s were the golden age of neighborhood baseball card collecting in Raymond.
Into the 1970s and 1980s, the local drug and variety stores like Barlow’s Pharmacueticals and Johnson’s General remained popular spots for kids to purchase packs. But a new entrepreneur tapped into the baseball card frenzy by opening the town’s first card shop. In 1977, 17-year old Peter Dunham decided to take some of his savings from his summer job at the ice cream shop and rented a small storefront next to the barbershop on Main Street. He called it “Pete’s Sports Cards” and stocked it with boxes of packs, individual cards for sale, and a large room dedicated to swapping duplicates. It was an instant success with kids and adults alike.
Pete’s Sports Cards helped grow the game of collecting in Raymond. Kids who had started small collections in the 1960s were now avid collectors and traders in their high school years. They would flock to Pete’s after school and on weekends to see what new packs or singles had come in. It also helped connect collectors of different ages, as older collectors in their 20s and 30s now had a place to engage with the hobby. Pete’s Sports Cards became a true hub of the baseball card community in Raymond throughout the 1980s and early 1990s.
The rise of interweb culture and online retailers presented a challenge to the local card shop model in the late 1990s. Kids now had many options to purchase cards online and find harder-to-find vintage pieces through websites like eBay. But Pete’s Sports Cards remained open through the 2000s thanks to a dedicated local customer base. Peter Dunham handed over the store to his son Jason in 2001, seeing the family business continue into a third generation. Jason kept the shop stocked with the latest releases but also cultivated the vintage and high-end sides of the business. Weekend traders events drew collectors from towns all over the region.
Through the 2010s, as physical card shops closed across the country, Pete’s Sports Cards thrived by embracing online sales while maintaining the shop as a beloved local institution. During the pandemic of 2020-2021, as sports were shut down and people looked for hobbies, collecting saw a major resurgence. For over four decades, three generations of the Dunham family have ensured Raymond remains a baseball card hub. And today, while cards are collected worldwide on phones and laptops, the nostalgia of a shop like Pete’s Sports Cards will likely keep drawing collectors for years to come, representing both baseball’s past and its future in this small New England town.
The history of baseball card collecting in Raymond reflects both the evolution of the hobby nationwide as well as the impact one determined local entrepreneur can make. From the first wax pack collections of the late 1950s to today’s digital marketplace, cards have remained a bridge between generations and a window into America’s pastime. Places like Pete’s Sports Cards help ensure even in a technology-driven age, that local human connection to collecting will continue coursing through the veins of small towns like Raymond.