In a repurposed standalone garage at the corner of Almond and Letterly Streets, antique and almost-antique toys of all sorts line the walls in towers, stacks, and piles leaving little elbow-room as golden oldies waft through the air. The corner is stuffed to bursting with video games ranging in newness from Xbox 360 to Atari, with some of the older systems still in their original box through a process I have to assume involves time travel. A sign above the garage reads J&J Video Games in a retro, pixelated font.

  At the helm of this decade-spanning fun-collage is unlikely suspect John Hagan, a former truck driver born and raised in Fishtown for all his 50+ years. He is gruff, relatable and does not wear a colorful tuxedo or break out into song at any point during our conversation, which takes place next to a broken NES system he has gutted and turned into a lamp.

  Though he opened this location in 2010, that is far from when he started acting as a merchant in the toy trade.

  “Down on the corner there, my friend owned a bar. When he passed away I took over the building and made it into a store. Then the yard in the back of my house, which I put walls and a roof on, had a little store, but that was too small. I wound up buying one of these garages and just opened it up here.”

  But Hagan’s collection really started during his childhood in the sixties. “I’ve always collected toys, always. When I was a kid, I liked G.I. Joes, stuff like that. I had all that stuff. It was always made better, looked nicer. Even my grandson, he’s only five, knows the difference between the old stuff and the new stuff.”

  Years upon years of scouring yard sales, thrift stores, flea markets, and eBay keep J&J Video Games fully stocked and then some in everything from Flash Gordon playsets to endorsed checks in frames from each of the dead Beatles. His own home, he assures us, is much, much worse. “I have so much stuff over there it isn’t funny. Entire basement from the floor to ceiling is boxes. I’ve got a little pathway to get through. My wife says ‘You ain’t got no room for stuff’. You can’t pass up a deal though. Somebody comes along with something, you buy it.”

  When his sons came into being in the late 80s and early 90s, they would end up helping to expand his repertoire, bringing him into the second half of the second half of the 20th century with video games of every stripe. At first he was buying them Nintendo games and consoles as presents. It wasn’t long before his experienced eye saw how this could fit into what was quickly evolving from a hobby into a career. Now that his store includes, among others, Ataris, Genesises (Genesi?), Nintendos, with used and still in the box versions of each, his now-grown sons act as consultants. “If I don’t know something or somebody comes in with a bunch of games, he’ll say ‘Send a picture’ and he’ll look at them, appraise them, y’know. He’s pretty fair with his prices too.”

  For used cartridge systems, he doesn’t just move them, but takes the time to order parts and restore them. “Someone came in with a Nintendo and wanted fifty bucks. I said ‘I only sell ‘em for fifty.’ Not only that, I take them and I clean ‘em all up, then I put the new pins in them. I mean, the pins, they cost me 20 bucks alone, that’s usually what goes bad. I get a new set and I replace them. So I can’t pay him fifty, do all that, then sell it for fifty, and I can’t sell it for more than fifty, ‘cause that’s what I always sold it for.”

  Now that he’s found his rhythm of operation, he is always passing things through his hands online, his physical store is open daily from noon to four, visitors of all ages come through, and he’s always keeping his eyes open for what he can put on the shelf next. In addition to everything from teddy bears to Elvis merch, John’s looking for “mainly anything nintendo, ‘cause that’s the only thing that’s selling right now.”

  You can find J&J Video Games at 2465 Almond St. They are open Monday-Sunday from 12-4PM. •