Best Place to Buy Collectables, Toys & Games
Arcadia Collectibles
512 Lincoln Ave, Bellevue. arcadiacollectiblespgh.com.
Open the door to the 480-square-foot geek collectibles shop in Bellevue and try to resist getting transfixed by the carefully constructed, ever-evolving action figure dioramas. Today, professional wrestler Chuck Liddel risks getting clobbered trying to put Marvel Comics’ The Thing in a triangle choke, while nearby, Chris Hemsworth’s Thor poses with Toy Story 4’s Forky, and X-Men mainstay Cyclops hangs off a mech and shoots laser beams. Each figure can be purchased — the shop will happily just use other toys to fill the gaps.
“We run into literally everything, and I’m like … ‘I’m 13 [years old] right now,’” co-owner Tyler Westminster tells Pittsburgh City Paper. “I’ll build it up; we can do it.”
Open for nearly two years, Arcadia Collectibles offers a lovingly curated, packed selection of toys, cards, video games, and more, run by two passionate pals who want to share their hobbies with the community.
Co-owners Westminster and Adam Nelson met while working for nearby GameStop locations. After honing their skills as salespeople and doing well at the chain, they say, the two decided it would be a better use of their time to open their own business, where their personalities could shine and they could be more generous to customers looking to buy something fun, or looking to get rid of something for a reasonable amount.
“We pack a lot into a little spot,” Nelson tells City Paper of the video game selection, which spans from as old as the Atari 2600 from the ’70s to modern consoles such as the Nintendo Switch.
It’s clear the two have feverish love and encyclopedic knowledge of video games and collectibles. On the shop’s Facebook page, for example, the owners find odd video games and write mini-essays about them, such as the forgotten Silent Hill: Book of Memories on the also-forgotten handheld system PlayStation Vita. They also livestream and post videos about tournaments, new shop arrivals, and what they’ve been playing.
“I think the thing that we pride ourselves the most on is, A, sense of community, and B, that sense of just distributing what we love,” Westminster says. “There’s way too many corporations, there’s way too many places where it’s just about, ‘Let’s make some money.’”
Once you’ve stopped yourself from gawking at the dioramas and digging through the video games, take a peek at the elaborate mural painted by Westminster’s wife, which pays tribute to the owners’ favorite nerdy characters. It serves as another reminder of the owners’ geek cred and knack for packing a lot into a small space.
“You don’t notice it at first,” Westminster says. “Then once you come to the back room, you’re like, ‘oh, what is that?’”