Couple offers a haven for local trading card, gaming enthusiasts

Steven and Tanisha Johnson have carved out a bastion of needed space for enthusiasts within the local trading card and gaming culture, bringing local young people together through collecting trading card and related games. "We actually met gaming online," Steven said. "We were about 12 hours apart. She was away at college and I lived in Asheville, North Carolina." Steven added that he was a southerner born and raised while his wife is from a small Ohio village called Newcomerstown. Tanisha noted that she attended Toledo University, changing her major from pre-law to English with a creative writing focus. Additionally, Johnson said she hopes to go back and complete a master's degree in social work. Steven said he was working third shift at a treatment facility for troubled youth at the time they first began online gaming, and he went the extra mile to visit her in Ohio during their early years together. "I would get off of work Friday morning, and then I would drive 12 hours to see her," he recalled. He noted that the visit would last from Friday night through Sunday morning when he would return to North Carolina in time for work that night. Steven noted that the idea of being brought together through online gaming is not only common for his age demographic, but sought after by those who hear their story. "If they're around our age, they're like, man, I hope I can find someone like that," he said. Johnson explained how he became interested in gaming shops while restarting his social group in college to find better friends. "I kind of grew up around like a rough crowd when I was younger." he said. "A lot of my friends were making bad decisions and stuff and unfortunately there was a lot of times I was standing right next to them." He added, "So when I went to college, I kind of tried to leave all those people behind, kind of just work on myself." The new friends he made brought him into a card shop where he met his current best friend of fifteen years and learned to play Magic: The Gathering. It began his passion for buying, selling and trading cards within this game and others. "It was kind of taboo to like this stuff when I was a kid," he said, adding that the games are far more normalized among the youth of today and embraced as a means to bring people out of a smart phone trance and into a tangible activity that brings people together. "You have to sit down," he said, "you have to really interact with the people across from the table from you. I think the nerdy culture in general around video games and card games and board games, they potentially are a lot cooler and a lot more helpful than people give them credit for." Steven said Erwin had no physical space for the local gaming and trading card culture prior to his opening the Chic and Geek Collectibles store about a year ago. "When I moved here it was about a 30- to 45-minute drive to find a store like this one," he said. This posed a problem for the youth of Unicoi County who could not drive that distance. However, he noted the growth of the local culture evidenced by the opening of several other similar stores in the Northeast Tennessee region over the last year. "I have so many people that come in here that say they've been looking for something to do, especially for the younger crowd," he said, adding that the perceived safety of the town for the youth contributes to their eagerness to visit the store after school and grow their passion for the culture together. "It's nice to come here and know that there's going to be people with similar interests," Steven said, "Whether it's like to interact with me by selling or trading me something, or people just want to know if we can sit down for a game of Magic." According to Steven, trading card games like Magic: The Gathering, Yu-Gi-Oh, Pokemon and others have been around for so long that the fan base is multi-generational, but occasionally that creates a roadblock for new and younger customers to get started. "I was actually in a chat today where someone was like, 'hey, this Walmart was restocking,'" said Steven. "The next guy immediately responded and said, 'Don't worry about it. I bought everything on the shelf if you guys want one message me.'" This practice is often called scalping and creates scarcity that drives up the value of the cards, which Steven noted is good for traders who buy and sell the products as if they were trading in the stock market, but bad for new customers just getting started. "You can find cards that are from $100, all the way up to $3,000," he said. "It has nothing to do with how good they are in the game, it's just their collector's value," Steven explained. The rapid sale of the cards to collectors who buy in bulk looking to make short-term profits even affects the distributor's ability to keep game shops well stocked, according to Johnson. "There's a lot of things in the culture right now too that are causing the little guys to struggle," he said. "A lot of bigger companies are trying to get a handle on it and bring more distribution back down to smaller stores." To combat these issues and recruit newcomers to secure a future for the culture, Tanisha noted that "there's been times where Steven [has] gotten stuff in and he's selling it for the same price or sometimes even less than what he got it for just so it's accessible to the public." She added, "I love that he's willing to do that and is so generous, especially when like it lights up a kid's face and they're like so excited." The couple's goal is to see this effort unite local youth, pull them away from smart phones and bring a 30-year-old cultural staple to new generations. That will also bring long-term gains for the economy of trading card collectibles, according to the Johnsons. Chic & Geek Collectibles is located at 201 S. Main Ave., Suite 3, Erwin. The phone number is (423) 430-9632.