Northwest Sportscards Game Center — Local services in Tacoma

A few weeks ago, Arbor (my daughter) and I went into Northwest Sportscards Game Center. We owned a few Pokémon cards, had played Pokémon Go! back in 2016, but overall didn't connect over the cute, little creatures. We arrived on a Sunday after mass and the place had around 30 people sitting at tables playing card games. We started looking around not knowing where to start, but soon 2 staff came over and asked if they could help.

Arbor's face lit up as they began throwing around names like Oh-Ho and Ditto. They began trading memories of the lore around these creatures and their favorite Pokémon. One of the staff who knew Pokémon TCG well asked if we'd like to play. I hadn't been able to teach Arbor the rules of the game, because I was having trouble myself. Again, Arbor couldn't have been happier that someone at a Card Game store wanted to play Pokémon. She was in her element of the crowd.

As Sebastian began teaching Arbor to play, we learned he had recently started U Dub T after completing military service. He was patient with Arbor and allowed her to learn choices in the flow of the game. After some time playing he motioned over to the other staff. They interacted for a bit. Soon he had 3, specially-cased cards laid out in front of him. "Arbor," he said, "each time you take out one of my Pokémon, you can turn over one of these cards and keep it."

He allowed her to take out the first Pokémon. She flipped the card and it was a holographic Umbreon card (a what?). She had mentioned earlier that Umbreon was her favorite. Sebastian had remembered and purchased Arbor 3 cards for her personal deck. She almost did a back flip.

We stayed for over an hour. We've been back every chance since and through this experience have a new interest to share. All thanks to some thoughtful, "ultra rare" people...

The only reason that I rated them 2 stars is because of my experience when trying to sell/trade cards with them. I completely understand that they have to make a profit off of the cards but I was more than lowballed with the offer they gave me for my cards. I will say that they are very knowledgeable with every box of cards that they SELL in that store but that if you ask them to buy your cards, it’s a different story. I had showed them 95 cards total, full of MLB and NFL cards. They offered me $25 for the 95 cards. In that stack is a rookie Jarred Kelenic card valued between $28 to $52, ALONE. This doesn’t include the other autographed cards that I had included in those 95 cards. I had another separate stack of cards in a plastic case. The guy told me that he wouldn’t look at the case and give me an offer for my cards until I accepted his offer of $25 for the other 95 cards that he had already looked at. So, I would pretty much have to accept the offer of the low price of $25 for him to even look at the other case of cards that I had. Just to clarify, the 95 cards that I have, going based off of the lowest price for each of those 95 cards, which is going off of the most recent eBay transactions, the cheapest sales of those cards all added up would be approximately $307.69 COMBINED. They offered me $25. I would never try and sell/trade cards here. They will rip you off completely. I mean, I’ve been ripped off in the past, but good god. Do NOT sell/trade...

Hello, I am not only new to Tacoma, but I'm also a gamer. I've been trying to expand my views from Pokemon to card games like magic. So I've checked this place out a couple times this week, even today, and received the same unwanted attitude from each of its employees. I would come in ask a basic question about magic because I don't really know anything about the game. When they answer my questions in a shameful manner, they would then look at me as if I shouldn't be there or have no right to be there. Then after my questions were answered, it appeared as if they tried to rush me out of the door by nonchalantly escorting me to the door. Furthermore, while magic games are going on, they don't even bother to allow me observe other players or even refer me to players who might be willing after their game to give me the run down of the game. What I've view their reasons for acting rude and disrespectful to me, when I've done nothing to them, is because of me being identified as LGBTQA male in an area of straight white males. Either way of their reasons, I would suggest caution to LGBTQA people and that there are other places that would welcome...