AU Sports Shop Has a Savvy Savior

Nearly a year after owner Steve Gold’s death, the has a new lease on life thanks to longtime family friend Scott Beatty.

After managing the store on behalf of an increasingly ill Gold from 2009-10, Beatty purchased the business last spring from his widow, Mary Ellen. He is continuing business as usual at AU Sports in the Village Crossing Shopping Center, where it moved to in 2008 after 28 years at two locations along Dempster Street in Skokie.

Beatty’s new touches are an aggressive Internet business and removal of the trademark clutter over which Gold had presided for decades. He teamed up with “silent partner” Frank Caputo to get the store in shape.

“I’ve been a friend of the family for 50 years,” said Beatty, who took over an inventory of 4 million trading cards along with jerseys, vintage scorecards and publications as well as other memorabilia.

Favorite hangout for years

“Steve’s mother [Audre Gold] and my mother [Arlene Beatty] were friends. I grew up around the store. I worked in the store when I was just out of high school," said the Chicago resident of the West Rogers Park neighborhood. "I would hang out all the time. Steve and I always were in touch with each other through the years.”

Beatty came into AU Sports, named for the Gold surname with “AU” the symbol for the precious metal, when he sold his outdoor café business that peddled ice cream and pop on Evanston beaches.

He first agreed to help out a few days a week. Then Beatty persuaded Gold to start Internet sales, a growing trend that was considered more important than in-store sales in the sports memorabilia business. He also “cleaned up” after an nonproductive employee who was let go.

A standing feature in AU Sports are 1950s vintage “Clark” and “Addison” street signs affixed to a pole, just as they were outside Wrigley Field. When AU Sports moved to its present 4,600-square-foot location, the signs stayed packed away in back–a situation Beatty immediately changed.

Keeping a promise

When Gold, 52, died of complications from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma last October, Beatty assured Mary Ellen Gold he would “keep the doors” open. He did just enough business to break even, so the future of the store remained uncertain for six months until the surviving Gold decided to sell the shop to Beatty.

“We started buying what I call legitimate memorabilia, a Ted Williams autograph or a Michael Jordan autograph,” he said. “Steve had a lot of stuff which I could call clutter.

“When the Blackhawks were playing so well, I must’ve spent a couple of grand over a few weeks bringing in stuff from [Jonathan] Toews, and [Patrick] Kane and [Duncan] Keith," Beatty said of one investment.

"I get into the store and [an employee] says, ‘Scott, It’s all gone.’ I thought he meant somebody stole something–the Hawks stuff. It’s all sold," he said in telling the story. "I said, ‘Oh, good.’

"Steve’s policy--and this is not a knock against him because he was in business for 30 years--is he let stuff come to him. I became more aggressive. I’m actively pursuing stuff, whoever is hot at the time,” Beatty added.

Keeping a tradition

Beatty plans to continue the series of Saturday afternoon autograph appearances of present and former athletes, for which Gold was noted. “I just talked to an agent for a number of Bears this morning, and [he] give me some prices,” he said. “We did two signings [recently] just to let people know we’re still doing it–[former Bear] Kurt Becker and [former Cub] Rich Nye.”

AU Sports even drew a crowd nearly a decade ago for former Cubs ballgirl Marla Collins, who was fired in 1986 for posing nude in Playboy magazine. At the appearance, several autograph hounds clutched copies of the Playboy for Collins to sign.

While disgraced players from baseball’s “steroid era” have depressed demand for cards from the 1980s and 1990s, much younger players coming into the game have boosted sales of new cards. AU Sports’ busiest season is early spring when the new cards first come out, according to Beatty.

While Beatty prepared a consignment sale for a couple during a recent afternoon, Caputo flipped through cards at another counter.

“I just handle the books and do the grunt work,” he said. “I like the kibitzing [with customers]."

Caputo has supervised some housekeeping that makes the Village Crossing location much cleaner and less cluttered than in the past.

“We just made it more open,” he said. “Steve had a big island of stuff in the middle.”

Now he and Beatty can see free and clear to a bright future for AU Sports.