Editor’s note: Made in Tarrant is an occasional Q&A series on small businesses started in Tarrant County. Submit your business here.
Rebecca Gallagher’s husband and son used to collect sports cards as a hobby. Now the family is turning that hobby into a business with some serious backing.
The family recently soft-opened Ballpark Cards on the ground level of Choctaw Stadium, formerly the home of the Texas Rangers. Gallagher said that with the collectible card trend continuing to grow, the family decided to jump in headfirst.
When she called the Rangers about store space at Choctaw, Gallagher found out there was an opening on the street side near the new Rangers stadium. From inside, you can see the Choctaw Stadium’s concourse and upper stands.
“We put together a business plan and some renderings and began to work on the shop last year,” Gallagher said. “And here we are today with a large, exciting space with a lot of different activations and passion in that card space.”
In the center of the shop is a 40-seat “card bar” where customers can sort through boxes filled with cards sorted by sports or by player to find items for their collections.
Ballpark Cards’ 40-seat card bar pictured on Oct. 21, 2026. (Chris Moss | Arlington Report)
The store features both full card boxes and single cards for sale. The Texas Rangers have pitched in a rotation of game-used and signed memorabilia to the store’s stock.
Arlington reporter Chris Moss met with Gallagher to talk about how she and her family have scaled their passion into a business, and what the future holds for Ballpark Cards.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Chris Moss: As someone who collected cards when I was growing up, I wonder — and I’m sure others may have this question — how do you scale this into a business? What are the first steps?
Rebecca Gallagher: The job was long and winding. Taking a space this large, we really had to be creative and intentional about how we would break up the square footage and what would be the focus of the shop.
Davin, my son, loves to complete card sets, and so does my husband, so part of that is having a place where you can easily go through things. The card bar was built at the heart of the store because it is a place that leans into the ability to hunt and sift through bins.
All of the A-frame (displays) and all of (this space) lean in so that you are capturing every customer and the different reasons why they would come into a card shop.
Moss: There’s so much here and so much space, but getting it to this scale seems hard. I’m not an entrepreneur, so I don’t know, but …
Gallagher: Entrepreneurship is something that we find very important. I own another company where I do events of all sorts of nature and scale.
This space leans a lot into the grassroots of customer service and retail. I take on the event side of things and the event space.
Davin is a huge collector, very analytical. He loves to figure out the price of something at the card bar: it costs X, and this is where we need to be (near retail price) to have good, healthy revenues.
My husband, Paul, is very much a visionary, and he loves working with people and creating those relationships to bring in other people that we can lean into their expertise as well.
Through that, we’ve created a family of employees, investors and partners we are continuing to grow so that, in the gravity of having something this big, we have partners alongside us to (include in) conversations.
Moss: Your grand opening is set for Nov. 13, but the lights are already on, and customers and card sellers are coming through. How has business been so far?
Gallagher: Business has been steady. It grows every day, and we’re finding that the card bar is super popular. We’ll see people sit for over an hour just going through cards, and they may leave with five, or they may leave with a stack of 80. We have a Topps (a major sports card manufacturer) account, so we are able to buy directly from Topps, and we get all the latest drops. Today, we just had the holiday collections for 2026 arrive, so hopefully we’ll have some people coming in looking for that.
It’s slow building, which I think is integral to any business. I don’t anticipate everything to be perfect, and that’s how everybody learns. You learn not only from mistakes or challenges, but you know, you learn from the successes.
Moss: It didn’t hit me until I parked here just how close it is to where Texas Rangers fans and other sports fans will be walking.
Gallagher: In the first couple of weeks, it’s been challenging. We’ll have a Cowboys game, and we’ll see a ton of traffic walk by. It’s like, how do you capture it? Because they don’t know, and sometimes people are intimidated. They look in the windows and are like, ‘I don’t know what’s going on there,’ so we want to create regulars who are then like, ‘Hey, ma’am, have you been in there yet?’
On game days, we want this place packed with fans. We want this to be a part of the fan experience of the district. It’s not just fans of the Rangers or the Cowboys. We want fans, we want collectors, and we want people who don’t know the hobby yet to learn about it in a place they won’t see anywhere else.
Moss: And what do you see in the future for Ballpark Cards?
Gallagher: I want this to be a place where somebody has a little time off of their lunch break, they come in, and they’re like, ‘You know what? I just want to sit and go into my world outside of work and have a little joy and sort through some cards.’ Or the kids over the weekend, where they’re like, ‘Hey, Mom and Dad, I know we just went to the grocery store, but can we stop by Ballpark Cards? There’s a new thing that just came out, or I really need this last card to finish my set. Can I come look through the card bar?’
I want this place to constantly buzz and hum with the community. And then (I want) people that aren’t from here who are here for a Rangers game or they’re here for a conference at one of the hotels nearby, come in because they enjoy collecting cards or they know their kid that they’re away from for the week is at home and they want to bring them something fun back.
We want Ballpark Cards to be nationally recognized. Our goal is to be voted number one next year. I think it’s just the energy. I want people to walk in and just be like, ‘Yeah, this is exciting,’ and also constantly have new things coming and going.
I want players in here. We want the excitement of … I mean, we’re in the district. So there’s not only the players, but you have entertainment that comes through here. We want that fun energy, that positive, like this is the spot to be.
Chris Moss is a reporter for the Arlington Report. Contact him at chris.moss@arlingtonreport.org.
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