With Community Support, Halifax Card Shop Thrives After Break-In
HALIFAX — ‘If I didn’t close for Covid, I’m not doing it for this.’ Joshua Pyle-Carter, the owner of The Deck Box in Halifax, posted that message to social media over the weekend alongside a picture of his store’s boarded-up window.
Spray painted on the plywood covering the broken glass was a message to his clients and customers: “We got robbed (but they missed the GOOD stuff)… still open 12-10, 7 days a week.”
Reached by phone not long after the robbery, Pyle-Carter spoke affably about the incident and how he’s chosen to handle it.
“It was an unfortunate thing. You know, I can’t really change that. I can only control how I respond to it. And I choose to look at the positives and how it highlighted how good our community is,” he says.
The thieves who smashed the windows of the Deck Box and wreaked havoc inside as they battered display cases made off with about $5,000 worth of inventory and caused another $5,000 of damage.
“They made a heck of a mess,” Pyle-Carter says with a good-natured chuckle. “It basically was a two-rock operation: one for the door one first one for the display case.”
The Deck Box is a card and gaming store that focuses on popular card games like Pokémon and Magic the Gathering. Collectors and fans will pay big money for the right card, and some of Pyle-Carter’s rarer items sell a thousand dollars or more.
But he doesn’t believe the thieves were collectors or even that sophisticated: they made off with a $600 booster pack but left an $800 card sitting right next to it.
And Pyle-Carter says he’s not particularly worried about the money, anyway.
“This is not going to be a concern for us. Honestly, I’m going to be more annoyed by all the paperwork I’ll have to fill out for the insurance claim. I don’t really want to spend my weekend filling out insurance forms,” he says.
In fact, on the day of the robbery he was back up and running by his normal opening time. Some of his staff who were off for the day even showed up to help out.
“When we started we didn’t have a whole lot, and I’m not willing to let someone slow me down, or be closed, because someone decided that they want something I have. Like, it’s not going to happen,” he says.
Pyle-Carter has run The Deck Box for seven years and says from the beginning the place was always about building a community.
He had played the Pokémon card game since he was a kid and thought the city could use a store focused specifically on cards. So shortly after leaving school, when he was still flat broke, he and his partner decided to take a risk and open.
They started small, but over the years have grown and expanded their focus to video games and other tabletop games. They also built a loyal customer base in the process, through their retail work, but also by being a hub for gamers by hosting tournaments and events.
“Our focus has always been on the local community. And it’s times like this when that really shows through,” he says.
Even since the break-in customers and clients have been stopping by to check in on them. Others have shown up specifically to buy something, just to show their support.
Pyle-Carter says that support is a big part of what allows him to keep a positive attitude when he’s faced with major challenges. And that attitude has allowed him to take what for some might be huge setbacks and turn them into wins.
Just like in 2015, when a runaway minivan smashed into the storefront of The Deck Box, causing major damage that required serious repairs.
After the incident, Pyle-Carter was looking at a long stretch of being boarded up, so he got in touch with an artist got them to deck out the plywood with gaming-inspired street art. People liked the art so much he incorporated it into his business and used it to inspire how the shop still looks today.
“While that whole situation was very unfortunate, if something hurts you, you might as well make use of it,” Pyle-Carter says.
Trevor Nichols is a staff writer with Huddle in Halifax. Send him an e-mail with your story suggestions: [email protected].