Walk into Goodfellas Ice Cream Shoppe in the small town of Hazle Township, Pennsylvania, and you'll see everything you'd expect from a standard ice cream store. Soft serve, pints-to-go, all the normal fixings.
But after a moment, you might notice some things you wouldn’t expect.
Hollywood memorabilia from “Goodfellas,” “Scarface” and “The Godfather” lines the walls.
Boxes of sports cards sit behind the counter. Depending on the day, you might spot a box of 1988 Donruss Baseball or some '90s basketball cards.
All this is a glimpse into the passions of Joe Curcio, the owner of the shop, who has infused his business with the collector’s mentality he has had since childhood.
People might come for the ice cream, but they stay for the baseball cards.
“There's no better scene than a father and son sitting at my counter, or the ice cream bar, as I call it, opening cards and having an ice cream,” Curcio said. “That will make your day, because the dad is happy since he’s seeing players he grew up watching, and the kid’s excited because he’s having an ice cream and opening cards with his dad. There’s no better sight than that.”
Curcio’s collecting origins are fairly typical. Born in 1975, he’s very much a child of the ‘80s, growing up during prime time for collecting junk wax (even if he didn’t know it was “junk” at the time) and, crucially, toys, which are his true passion.
His cousin began buying Starting Lineup Figures, toys produced by Kenner beginning in 1988 and featuring a figure of an athlete along with a card, in the late 1980s. Curcio was intrigued.
One day around 1990, he walked into the now-defunct Hills Department store and spotted a Don Mattingly figure.
His stepdad bought it for him.
“From that day on, I was hooked on Starting Lineup,” Curcio said. “It was the best of both worlds … you get the figure, and you got the cards.”
Once Curcio got into his teenage years, his collecting journey took a bit of a pause. In a tale as old as time, his mother urged him to get rid of his collection. He particularly recalls a back-and-forth over his G.I. Joe toys.
“I said, ‘Please don't throw these away. These are worth money someday’,” Curcio recalled. But his prediction, while perhaps proven true to an extent today, did little to sway the conversation. The toys were given to his cousin. “I still have no idea what he did with them.”
Then, in the early 2000s, Curcio decided to see what some of his favorite childhood toys were worth.
Sure enough, some of the G.I. Joe, "Star Wars" and even Starting Lineup figures from his youth had a bit of value.
He started slowly buying up figures and by 2010 had a decent sized collection. But his goals were bigger. He wanted to have his own museum some day.
Curcio started looking for the rarest figures, often little-known athletes released regionally, the most coveted of which are figures of athletes such as Bill Fralic, an offensive lineman for the Atlanta Falcons. Figures from the Falcons 1989 set are among the hardest to find in the hobby. Only available regionally, decades later Fralic and quarterback Chris Miller are two of the rarest and most valuable.
In September, a Miller figure, graded by AFA, sold for $2,350 — the second-highest price ever paid for an SLU. First? Nearly $4,000 for a Fralic.
Collectors like Curcio use guides released by Tuff Stuff in the 1990s to keep track of the grails, often featuring players such as Fralic who aren’t exactly household names.
“Us collectors call it the bible,” Curcio said.
Today, Curcio has made his way through the "bible" and managed to find all of the grails. He has a complete set of 1988 basketball, has owned multiple Fralics and a bevy of others in different variants.
According to a 1991 “The Tuff Stuff Guide to Kenner Starting Lineup,” it’s estimated the typical production for a new all-star tended to be less than 10,000 each. “When you consider that Kenner research reveals as many as 50 percent of the figures are opened by the purchaser, those in unopened condition must become more valuable.”
With the advent of grading sealed toys, a market dominated by third-party authenticators AFA and CAS, the sealed aspect has become a significant driver of the market, helping establish values and rarity. Same goes for the card produced for each SLU, which, when removed from the package, still can go for big money in good condition.
A 1988 Kenner Starting Lineup Michael Jordan card in PSA 10 condition has sold for as high as $15,100 — the most ever paid for a Kenner SLU card.
Around 2008, Curcio started the first Kenner SLU group on Facebook. It currently has more than 20,000 members. Over the last few years, he achieved his dream of building a museum — which he calls the “SLUseum” in his home. Though, the hunt is mostly over for Curcio, who has basically run out of SLUs to chase.
He loves his collection, and he is pretty content for now. “It’s something that took me years to do, and I would never want to do it again.”
But in 2019, when redoing his ice cream shop, he found another way to engage with his passion for collecting. “I wanted to incorporate my life in the ice cream shop, so I put it in a bar and I put baseball cards behind it,” Curcio said. Though he had started selling cards at his shop years earlier, now they were front and center.
Then came the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I couldn't hold on to cards,” he said of the unprecedented demand. Even today, as the market has cooled, it remains an integral part of his shop, which has become an attraction of sorts. Though, he rarely brings any SLUs into the shop as the figures are too expensive for kids and less universally understood. Plus, they take up too much space.
Looking back on his collecting journey, it might look a bit different than the days of his childhood, but Curcio sees parallels.
“Fast forward all these years, I basically do the same thing. I’ll buy stuff, sell doubles, buy more stuff and keep what I want.”
Will Stern is a reporter and editor for cllct.