I was a gen one kid.
Back when there were 151 Pokémon and a glitch called MissingNo living in the spaces between them. I traded in the schoolyard, argued about type matchups I only half understood, and carried a small binder everywhere like it held something that mattered. To me it did.
Then life moved on, the way it tends to. The binder went into a box. The box went into a cupboard. Years passed and I mostly forgot how much that world had meant to me.
What brought it back was my son.
It started with him wanting to rip packs. That was the whole draw at first. The sound of the wrapper, the flip of each card, the small hope that the next one would be the one. And the smell. Freshly opened packs have a distinct one that has not changed in twenty years, and the moment it hit me I was ten years old again. I remembered all of it exactly.
From there it grew into something slower. He started asking what the cards actually did, so I began teaching him how to play. One rule at a time, one turn at a time. The photo at the top is one of those nights. Me walking him through the bench, the prize cards, the shape of a turn. Him laughing because he had just done something clever and knew it.
I did not expect what came next. Teaching him brought the whole thing back for me. Not the soft nostalgia you feel flipping through old photos. The real version. The part of me that genuinely loved this, that found focus and calm and a quiet kind of joy in a game played with little creatures on cardboard.
So that is where Route27 comes from. Not a business plan first and a passion bolted on afterwards. The other way around.
I am building the shop I would have wanted as a kid and the shop I want to bring my son to now. A place that treats the cards with respect. Somewhere you can learn to play without feeling rushed, find the single you have been chasing, and talk to someone who actually cares about the same things you do.
I am introverted by nature, so I am not going to shout about any of this. That is not the plan. Route27 is meant to be a quiet kind of presence. Steady, considered, run by someone who was in this long before it was a shop and will still be in it long after. A place for people who already know why they are here.
That is the honest reason. My son handed my own childhood back to me across a dining table, one turn at a time. Route27 is what I decided to do with it.
Thanks for being here at the start.
