Continuously serving Kosciusko County since 1854
Pokémon is one of the popular trading card games found at Nicodemus Cards & Gaming’s new location at 151 S. High St., Warsaw.
By sheer coincidence, perhaps, that address - specifically the 151 - is significant in the Pokémon world.
Nicodemus Cards & Gaming co-owner Mike Hadley explained, “It just also happens that Series 1, the original Pokémon, there are 151 Pokémon in the original base set. So in the world of nerdy Pokémon stuff, 151 is a very significant kind of thing. So when we saw the 151, we were like, ‘OK!’ So there’s that tie-in as well.”
The business celebrated its new location Thursday with a ribbon-cutting ceremony with the Kosciusko Chamber of Commerce.
“We moved here one week ago today,” Hadley said. “And then we were on Market Street before that. We moved to Market Street in October of 2022, and before that we were on Winona (Avenue) ... we opened up there in April of 2021.”
Nicodemus Cards & Gaming sells sports and trading cards, trading card games, board games and associated supplies and collectibles.
“We have a play space behind me where we can seat, I think, about 85 people, somewhere in that range. So we host Pokémon tournaments, Lorcana tournaments, Magic the Gathering tournaments. Learn-to-play events. Any number of TCG (Trading Card Games) games, too, it’s not just learning for those. And then we’ll be doing - they call them Rip Nights through Topps - where it’s a co-promoted event with them. Topps is one of the main sports card manufacturers out there, and we do giveaways and raffles and things like that to get people in and get them excited about sports cards and card collecting in general,” Hadley said.
There’s weekly events happening at Nicodemus Cards & Gaming, as far tournaments. A schedule is posted on their website and Facebook, as well as at the store.
Hadley said they relocated for more space and for the opportunity to own a building versus renting one.
“We were very, very cramped in our old location and we couldn’t grow any more than what we already had, so we were bursting at the seams over there. This is a retail footprint three times the square footage for the retail storefront and over six times the square footage for the play space, from what we had before, and not to mention like the back-of-the-house stuff with the storage and shipping/receiving, office space that we have that we didn’t enjoy before. So, it enables us to continue to grow,” Hadley said.
He said their growth has been slow and organic since they first opened.
“When we opened April 1, 2021, we were all selling stuff online through eBay and things like that. The idea was we would have a store so that we then could have stuff to then sell on the internet, and then people started coming in to the store, which was not what we expected at all. So then we got too busy in the store and we couldn’t have time to run the online stuff anymore, so then we kind of pivoted and leaned into that, which leaned into us moving,” Hadley said.
As cheesy as he said it might sound, “the coolest part is making genuine friends with people as an adult, which is difficult to do outside of work. But, I’m working, but we’re also conversing. You really get to know people on a personal level, so there’s definitely people that we’ve known now for five, six years and it’s been awesome to be able to hire some of those people, too. So, outside of family members, every single employee is a customer who we got to know well enough and offered them a position, and that’s been really cool.”
Hadley said he doesn’t want to grow too quickly, but “at the same time, we’ve been doing - since we opened - it’s been 50-plus percent growth every single year, including this year. No signs of it slowing down right now. It’s kind of crazy.”
Nicodemus Cards & Gaming has a customer rewards program. On Saturday, he said they signed up 25 new customers who he had never seen before.
“It’s wild. We’re kind of excited to see where it goes,” Hadley stated.
The average age of their customers is mid 20s, but he said they definitely get the young ones in, as well as the “senior division.”
“We’re trying to focus a lot on the TCG side of things, get a lot of youth leagues going and stuff like that. So, we have Lorcana and Magic the Gathering youth leagues, so it’s like 17 and younger for them to play, which is kind of different and unique because a lot of places will do Friday night Magic, but it’s very focused on adults and hyper competitive. This is more like be nice, learn how to play, hang out, and that’s been our whole vibe,” Hadley said.
Eventually, Hadley said they hope to have a clubhouse space where a person can pay for access 24/7 to use the play area and that would be segregated off from the retail space. “We just kind of want to foster that kind of safe space kind of vibes.”
Nicodemus Cards & Gaming is moving more towards having events after business hours, but those details are still being hammered out.
“We’re going to expand our hours going into the holiday season. And then, what we did last year was we went to seven days in the holiday season and never went back. We’re probably going to expand those hours into the holiday season, and then probably never go back after that, too, so we hired a couple more people and staff, trained the staff up, and figure out what the new normal is here and then we can kind of go from there,” Hadley explained.
Currently, hours are 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Wednesdays and Thursdays; 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Fridays; 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturdays; noon to 5 p.m. Sundays; 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Mondays; and noon to 6 p.m. Tuesdays.
One final note: Nicodemus is not the last name of anyone who owns or works at the store.
“(It was) named after a combination of a character from the ‘Secret of NIMH’ cartoon from the ’80s - there’s a character named Nicodemus who is the old man - but mainly it was Maid Marian’s cat in ‘Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves’,” Hadley said. “You can find the clip on YouTube. It’s very exciting. It’s just a throwaway line, an inside joke between me and Mark (Liddell), one of the other owners, and that’s what I named the store. He was like, ‘I can’t believe that.’”
After the fact, he learned there actually were people with the last name of Nicodemus in the area. Hadley said even though he gets mistaken for a Nicodemus, he and his wife, Diana, also a co-owner, moved here about 10 years ago and aren’t related to anyone named Nicodemus.
