Rare Pikachu, Kobe’s sneakers — a hidden vault guards it all

The ordinary brown brick building, tucked within a nondescript block on a street in Delaware, would probably not garner much attention if it weren’t for the razor wire and armed guards outside — hints that something important lay inside, possibly even precious.

Fort Knox it is not. But the stash of collectibles the building holds is undoubtedly worthy of guarding.

There’s a rare Pikachu card and a century-old one of baseball great Honus Wagner, which recently sold for $7.25 million in a private sale. In addition to the trading cards, there are baseball bats and basketball shoes, including a pair of sneakers worn and signed by the late NBA great Kobe Bryant.

In all, $200 million in collectibles are stored in two vaults inside the building, equipped with some of the latest technology to keep the valuable cache safe from harm or thieves.

“A lot of people don’t keep jewelry at their house.

They keep it at a safety deposit box,” maybe at a secure bank, said Ross Hoffman, the chief executive officer of Goldin Co., a division of industry giant Collectors, which operates the vault, a high-security facility specializing in protecting collectibles.

The building has no signage, and the company asked that any hint of its location not be divulged. Inside is a technologically advanced facility with a guarded vault, equipped with seismic motion detectors that will sound the alarm should anyone try to jackhammer through walls.

To move from room to room, a security guard ushers you through a cardactivated double door entry way, letting the first door close before passing through the next. There are surveillance cameras everywhere.

Behind one of two 7,500-pound vault doors, each more than a foot thick, are rows of shelves that extend to the building’s rafters. Rows upon rows of boxes are filled with collectors’ items — including some with relatively little monetary worth but that represent sentimental value for their owners or that could someday be worth much more.

Hoffman called the facility a “pain killer.”

“There’s pain of things getting lost. There’s pain in the things getting stolen,” Hoffman said.

Interest in sports collectibles and memorabilia has boomed in recent years, not just high-ticket items but also for rediscovered pieces that had been tucked away in attics or basements. In August, a mint condition Mickey Mantle baseball card sold for $12.6 million.