Rick Snyder, the founder and owner of MINT State, was born and raised in the Brighton Beach and Sheepshead Bay neighborhoods of Brooklyn, New York. An avid sports fan, Rick says his infatuation with sports cards began at the tender age of five back in 1970 when his grandfather bought him his first pack of baseball cards. “The pursuit of the world’s finest copies of my favorite sports heroes has thrilled me for nearly 50 years both as a collector and as a full-time dealer.”

Following his graduation from the University of Chicago with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Statistics, Rick worked for fifteen years as a senior budget analyst in the field of large-scale survey research. The demands of the position – in addition to a daily commute time of nearly four hours – led to the formation of MINT State. “Opening my own collectibles business was the fulfillment of a life-long dream. The advent of online shopping coupled with the growth of eBay enabled me to get the business up and running despite the fact I had barely any capital and no previous experience as a sports card dealer. If I was going to devote sixty to eighty hours every week to a business, I figured it should be one I own.”

Rick married Beth Peters in 1992 and the couple has two children, Grace and Nathaniel (pictured). In 2015, the Snyder family and MINT State moved from Elburn, Illinois to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, fully embracing a coastal lifestyle and beach living. “If we didn’t move and were still in Illinois, MINT State would not have been contacted by the family behind The Lucky 7 Find. That’s the very definition of icing on the cake!”