LEXINGTON — Gary Hummel had never managed a retail outfit when he co-founded a game store six years ago.
Clearly, he played his cards right. The Findlay-based retailer recently expanded by opening a second location at 305 Main Street in Lexington.
Post Board Gaming sells collectible card games, board games, role-playing games and gaming supplies. The store also buys Magic: The Gathering, Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh! cards.
Post Board Gaming has two sides — a retail side and a playing side with tables and chairs. Hummel said it’s common for stores that sell card trading games to have such a space.
“The table spaces are free and it’s always open,” he said. “The only times that wouldn’t be available is when we run larger tournaments where all of the seats will be taken.”
Hummel opened Post Board Gaming’s first location in 2015. The store where he and his friends often met to play Magic: The Gathering was up for sale. Hummel and a friend had experience buying and selling singles, so the store owner approached them and asked if they’d be interested in taking it over.
They ended up purchasing it and revamped it under a new brand.
“(The owner) asked if we wanted to buy the store on a Friday. We bought the store on Monday. It escalated quickly,” Hummel recalled.
“Neither of us had any real experience running a business, running a retail store. We just said, we’re relatively smart people, we’ll figure it out.”
Hummel recalls those first few years as a long grind with plenty of trial and error, but the store continued to grow. He eventually bought out his partner and became the sole owner.
Hummel expanded to Lexington to acquire another, short-lived game store. The previous owner struggled to obtain inventory due to recent supply chain shortages.
“Basically if you weren’t already in (with suppliers) pre-pandemic, you weren’t going to get any product because product was in such short supply,” Hummel explained. “What you spend determines your allocation for limited product.”
Hummel hired Bobby Reid, a 2014 Madison High School graduate, to run the Lexington store. The two met years ago when Reid played in tournaments at Post Board Gaming in Findlay.
Reid said trading card games are his favorite type to play.
“I was the college tennis player and when I quit, I needed a competitive outlet,” Reid said. “So I got into competitive cards.”
While the Lexington site is a second location, Hummel said its inventory will be governed by local demand.
“The product lines will always continue to grow and change over the years,” he said. “It’s a learning process and a growing process of seeing what this particular community likes and doesn’t like and you know, curating that as best as we can.”
In the future, he hopes the Lexington store will continue to host tournaments and events and possibly partner with other businesses in the community.
The store will also have “demo shelves,” where customers can come in and test drive new games before purchasing.
The Lexington store gets new inventory weekly. Customers can stop in during business hours, shop online or have more unique items shipped to the store.
“Most people don’t know the extensiveness of board games in the board game market. At this point, there’s hundreds of thousands of board games and there’s thousands that come out every year,” Hummel said.
“We’re always listening for what (products) people are asking for.”
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