DAVIS JUNCTION — If you’re a sports fan, and you’re looking for that extra special piece of memorabilia to give friends and fellow collectors something to be jealous of, Rick Giddings is your guy.

Maybe it’s a future sports legend’s rare rookie card, or a hall-of-famer’s signed photo. Perhaps it’s a game-worn jersey, or just a small piece of one attached to a card. If you’re looking for it, there’s a sporting chance Giddings has it — or he knows someone he can get it from. Giddings has developed connections with fellow sports memorabilia dealers that’s helped him score points with both sports fans and collectors alike.

Giddings owns Gizmo’s Sportscards, running it out of his Davis Junction home, by appointment Monday through Saturday, and he’s developed a national reputation in the sports card and memorabilia hobby.

The small Ogle County town is his home base during a year full of travel that takes him across the nation seeking those “holy grail” sports treasures, and helping others sell theirs for wads of cool cash. It’s a fast-paced industry where sports moments, major news and the national economy can help or hurt the collector market, but Giddings has his pulse on what’s trending in the hobby in a way that only a select few can.

Collectors from across the nation have turned to Giddings to help them finish a collection or start a new one, bringing a happy ending to what can be a years-long quest for that key card or hard-to-find collector’s item. He brings years of expertise and connections he’s made in the memorabilia industry to authenticate signatures and establish provenance. He’ll know a fake card or signature when he sees it.

“I’ve bought collections of signed balls of hall-of-famers, and I have a guy for that,” Giddings said. “I have a guy for helmets, and a guy for jerseys. It’s really about making connections with guys in this industry.”

Of the entire gamut of memorabilia he sells, sports cards are Giddings’ true love.

Since touching his first pack of cards, from the 1969 Topps baseball set, as a 6-year-old, Giddings has owned, and sold, countless cards, some of which casual collectors could only dream of owning: the 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle that became rare after a large amount of its print run was discarded, cards of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig from their playing days in the 1920s and 1930s, mini cards that came in packs of tobacco before World War I, and even rookie cards of hall of fame athletes from the 1950s that would take most people a month of paychecks to afford.

Giddings, an Army veteran whose nickname of “Gizmo” came from his slowpitch softball playing days, is a fan of the Pittsburgh professional sports teams — baseball’s Pirates, football’s Steelers and hockey’s Penguins — and just like the collectors he helps today, he’s had his share of dream cards. Early on, Pirates legend Roberto Clemente’s 1955 Topps rookie card was one of those. Today, he has stacks of Clemente cards from throughout his playing days, as well as tribute cards released after Clemente died in a December 1972 plane crash in Puerto Rico.

Even now, when Giddings comes across Clemente’s 1969 Topps card for a customer, or the 1975 Topps MVP tribute subset card of him, it still brings back memories of his first pack of cards, as he embarked on a quest to peel open the wax paper of every pack he could get his hands on to complete his first set. Even as a kid, his determination was strong and he eventually built 19 sets of the 1975 cards, known among collectors for their colorful borders.

“When I started, I was 6,” Giddings said. “My dad bought my first cards in 1969, and the packs were a nickel or a dime. I collected because I liked baseball cards. When I was 12 years old, I built a 1975 Topps set, which has [hall of famers] George Brett’s and Robin Yount’s rookie year. I was spending every piece of my allowance.”

Giddings’ dedication to the sports card hobby followed him into his adulthood in the early 1990s, an era of good and bad in the industry. Brand-name baseball cards were being mass produced during the “junk wax era,” Michael Jordan’s 1986-87 Fleer basketball rookie card was becoming the hottest card in the hobby, and vintage Mickey Mantle cards soared in value after his death in 1995. At that time, Giddings worked in the poultry and food service industry full time, but he still found time for his hobby, and in 2004 he turned his attention full-time to selling cards and memorabilia.

Gizmo’s is open by appointment only — owing to the time it takes for Giddings to hunt down top-notch items across the country — and like some of the cards he sells, he’s a rarity himself: a hobby dealer who he doesn’t sell through online markets, nor does he accept credit or debit cards or payments through apps — he sticks to cash, personal or cashier’s checks, money orders and bank transfers. It’s a system that’s worked well for him, and he’s amassed an inventory of a few million sports cards, sold in singles, boxed sets and bulk boxes. Many of his customers are dealers looking for cheap cards of stars to sell at card shows. He also sells card supplies, including sleeves and cases.

Not selling his wares on the web, Giddings also keeps to more traditional means of advertising; about 90 percent of his ads are on paper, he said, from full pages on the inside cover of hobby publications to placemats at local restaurants, and he’s had good results attracting people of all ages, he said.

“We supply collectors and dealers, and I do a lot of wholesale,” Giddings said. “I have guys who come and say, ‘Rick, I need stars.’ Okay, I have seven boxes for you from the era you want. We work with a multitude of dealers, guys who are setting up at shows.”

Giddings doesn’t set up at regional card shows, such as the ones in Rockford and Peru. There’s only one show where he has his tables of cases and cards, and that’s at the National Sports Collectors Convention, the largest annual card show in the nation. This year’s show isn’t too far from home, in the Chicago suburb of Rosemont, at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center from July 30 to Aug. 3. Giddings is a member of the show’s board of directors, and expects about 125,000 visitors to this year’s event, he said.

“Being on the board of directors is very neat,” Giddings said. “You’re voted in by your peers, so you’re voted in by someone who actually knows what they’re doing. I do one show a year, and it’s the greatest show on the Earth.”

Not all of Gidding’s clients are collectors. Some people who aren’t in the hobby but have a feeling that their old cards are worth something will contact him to see if he wants to buy them. Sometimes those calls have turned into huge finds for him and big paydays for the seller. He’s also spent his share of time in attics and basements, discovering long-forgotten cards shoved in shoe boxes decades ago, back when kids would stick cards in bicycle spokes instead of collector sleeves.

“I had a guy from Freeport whose grandpa had passed and was searching through his stuff,” Giddings said. “He came here with tall boxes that were on a shelf in the basement. It was all ’55 Bowman and ’53 Topps, and these cards looked like they had never been out the box. I found the ’53 Mantle in there, and it looked gorgeous. These were just cards that he found that were handed to him. He got a new car and took care of stuff that he needed to do, and was happier than hell. That was a lot of fun. It was just two old ratty boxes.”

As technology has evolved, so have sports cards: chrome cards were introduced in the early 1990s, cards with swatches of game jerseys and pieces of autographs attached came later in the decade, and countless variations, colors and cuts — some of which are one-of-a-kind — took off in the 2000s and continue to evolve with this year’s releases. The hobby has also become a multi-billion dollar business that not even a pandemic could stop — in fact, it turned out to be a benefit to some businesses, like Gidding’s. When the coronavirus pandemic limited travel in 2020, collectors were ordering boxes of packs of cards through the mail, passing the time at home hoping to find rare and unique cards that would net them some extra cash.

“Covid was good because everyone wanted to rip packs, and we were buying them by the cases,” Giddings said.

Prices of vintage cards, made before 1979, also started to rise during the pandemic as collectors had more time on their hands to build their collections.

Whether it’s been collectors starting out or finishing up their collection, Giddings has been a big part of this American pastime, helping them find what they’re looking for.

These days, the same cards Giddings collected as a kid in the 1970s are seeing a rise in value — “If you’re smart, buy vintage,” he said.

“The ’70s stuff is the thing to collect right now, as you can still buy them,” Giddings said. “In about 10 years, you’re going to have a tough time buying ’70s stuff. They need to be bought now, because that market is starting to move.”

Even though vintage cards are currently hot, there’s still some treasure to be found in the “junk wax” era of the ’80s and ’90s, such as autographed inserts, rainbow refractor chrome cards, mistake cards not meant for printing (such as a 1989 Fleer Billy Ripken card with an expletive on a bat knob), and rare cards produced in a limited market that are still squirreled away in bedroom closets and basements, waiting for someone like Giddings to put them back in the market.

“I want to see what they got,” he said. “There’s stuff that no one even knows about. There are rare inserts from the ’80s-’90s era — die-cut Jordans, anything like that is the stuff I’m looking for. That’s where the money’s at. There are guys who just want the $1-$20 dollar stuff, and I’ll have boxes of it; they’ll sell them and make a fortune, and then come the next month and buy more.”

It takes a special know-how to succeed in the sports memorabilia industry, and Giddings has seen that pool of people become younger over the years, including teenagers. He enjoys getting to know someone who is as big into the hobby as he is, he said, and when he sees a kid open a pack of new cards, hoping for that one-of-a-kind card, he thinks back to the days when he would do the same thing as a young collector.

“It’s really fun,” Giddings said. “I get to like what I do. It’s interesting. It’s been a very, very interesting run.”

Gizmo’s Sportscards in Davis Junction is open by appointment Monday through Saturday. Go to gizmossportscards.com, email pirate8@aol.com or call 815-540-5206 for more information.