Grady O'Connor - Courtside Cards

Grady O'Connor, 16, runs Courtside Cards and Collectibles which is located inside of the SOFIVE Soccer Center at 400 North Street in Saco, Maine.

The first thing you notice about Grady O’Connor is his height.

At 16, he’s already 6'4", which makes him easy to spot across the indoor fields at the SOFIVE Soccer Center in Saco. Kids run drills. Parents line the sidelines. Games echo off the walls. And tucked just off the action, behind a glass display case filled with cards, is Grady—standing, talking, dealing, watching it all unfold.

He looks like he belongs there. Like this is normal.

It isn’t.

Grady owns the card side of a shop inside the facility at 400 North Street. He runs it after school. He buys, sells, trades, and talks with customers who range from serious collectors to fifth graders clutching dollar bills and dreams.

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Seven years ago, he was one of them.

It started in a Target.

He was nine, following his mom through the aisles, bored, until he wandered into the card section and picked up a single pack of 2018–2019 Optic basketball. Inside was an autograph—Troy Brown Jr., not a star, not a name most people would recognize.

But it didn’t matter.

“I saw the autograph and thought it was the coolest thing in the world,” he said. “I've been hooked ever since.”

That was it. No grand plan. No business model. Just a moment—a signature on cardboard that made something click.

Connelly Early, Bill Russell and Drake Maye cards on display at Courtside Cards in Saco.

From there, it spread the way hobbies tend to when they take hold early. More packs. A friend pulled in. Trips to local shops. Shows in Dover, New Hampshire. Learning the language—parallels, refractors, numbered cards. Learning how value works. Learning how people work.

By 12 or 13, he was walking the floor at The National, the biggest card show in the country, staring at a 1952 Mickey Mantle rookie—graded, sealed, guarded, worth $12 million.

You don’t forget seeing something like that at that age.

The shop came later, but not by accident. Near the end of 2025, an idea started forming inside the SOFIVE facility. There was already traffic—teams, families, practices—but nowhere for people to gather between games. No place to linger.

Jeremy Ray, connected to the basketball programs in Biddeford, had a vision for a space that felt different. Merchandise, TVs, a place to hang out. Cards were part of that idea.

He knew Grady collected. So he asked. There’s a version of this story where a 16-year-old says no. Or hesitates. Or waits.

Grady didn’t.

Instead, the idea folded into school. Through the Center of Technology in Biddeford, he set up an internship—three classes a day, out by 1, then straight to the shop.

It sounds simple when he says it. It isn’t. He’s not shadowing someone. He’s running it.

The layout is clean and deliberate.

A six-foot glass display case anchors the space—basketball, football, baseball, a few soccer cards. Prices range from ten dollars to five hundred. Behind it, sealed boxes and packs. Supplies—top loaders, sleeves, magnetics—everything needed to protect what’s inside.

Off to the side, value boxes. One dollar to ten dollars. The entry point.

Because not everyone walks in the same way.

Cooper Flagg Cards on display.

There’s a local feel to the cards, even if the market is global. Tom Brady. Rob Gronkowski. Big Papi. A noticeable stack of Cooper Flagg cards—close to twenty of them.

Flagg matters here.

He played high school ball in Maine. People in this building saw him. Know someone who knows him. Watched him at the Cross Insurance Arena before everything got bigger in Texas. Now he’s something else entirely.

“He may be across the country,” Grady said, “but we know where he came from.”

That kind of connection travels through the shop. Through conversations. Through the cards themselves.

Not everything is about value. Though value is always there.

Cards behave like a market. Prices move. Players surge. Injuries shift everything overnight. A breakout game can send values climbing. A torn ACL can flatten them.

Grady chats with a few young customers that bought a few packs of cards.

Grady talks about it like someone older, someone who’s watched enough cycles to understand the risk.

There are the rookies—the volatile ones. The guesses.

And then there are the steady names. Brady. Ohtani. Gretzky. Tiger Woods. Michael Jordan. Legends whose cards don’t dip the same way.

It sounds like stocks because, in a way, it is. But that’s not the whole picture.

“Collect what you like,” he said.

Because if you like it, the swings don’t hit the same.

The stories that stick aren’t always the big ones.

There was a rare Bowman Chrome red refractor of rookie Kon Knueppel—numbered to five—that passed through his hands. A card you almost never see.

But that’s not the one he lingers on. Instead, he talks about a kid. A younger collector who had been saving—trading up, holding cards, waiting. Watching a Nikola Jokić autograph priced at $400. Coming in again and again, getting closer.

Then one day, making the deal.

Or the group of fifth and sixth graders who come in every week after practice. Stay for 45 minutes. Sometimes an hour. Talking, trading, showing what they’ve got.

Parents mention it to Grady - That this is the highlight of their week.

At first, most of the foot traffic came from inside the building. Siblings during practices. Parents waiting between games. People wandering in.

That’s changed.

Now people come specifically for the shop. To sell. To trade. To see what’s new. And over time, something else has formed—something less visible than the cards.

Grady knows what people collect. He knows who’s looking for what. So when a card comes in, he already has someone in mind. A quiet kind of matchmaking. A different kind of inventory system.

Enter the SOFIVE Soccer Center entrance and hang an immediate right to find Grady and Courtside Cards.

He’s still 16.

He drives himself here now. Full license. Jokes about it—“watch out around town.” He’s looking at colleges in North Carolina. Appalachian State. Wake Forest. High Point. Somewhere without snow.

He talks about possibly shifting the shop online when he leaves. Keeping it going in a different form.

Or maybe something else entirely.

He doesn’t try to lock it in.

There’s a moment, late in the conversation, where I ask Grady if he has advice to parents or kids that have entrepreneurial thoughts.  The questions turn outward.

He doesn’t overcomplicate it… "Do what you like."

Not in a vague way, but in a practical one. Because there are paths now that didn’t exist before. The internet connects everything. Niches become communities. Communities become businesses.

And still—

“You don’t have to have everything figured out yet,” he said.

Grady O'Connor with a few rookie cards.

Which, coming from someone running a shop at 16, lands a little differently.

The sports facility hums around him.

Games start and stop. Shoes squeak across the turf. Doors open, close, open again.

Someone walks over to the case. Another leans in. Kids rip open packs of cards.

Grady shifts slightly, reaching for a card, already mid-conversation.

The lights overhead reflect the colorful refractors.

The cards move from one collection to another.

And behind the case, a 16-year-old keeps pace—talking, explaining, teaching, learning, negotiating and smiling.

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Many thanks to Grady (and his mom - Martha!) for the interview on Thursday, April 15, 2026. Photos and Interview by Cy Cyr.

Visit Courtside Cards and Collectibles in the SOFIVE SOCCER CENTER (enter, and immediately look right) in Saco, Maine at 400 North Street.

Visit Courtside Cards and Collectibles on Instagram for hours and stock.

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