CHAMPAIGN — An interesting cross section of society walks under the green awning and squeezes into the tight quarters at Specialty Stamp & Coin.

Owner Mark Cortez said some of the area’s most well-known and wealthy names stop by the shop, though he won't name-drop. And kids — like Cortez did when he was young — come into the shop with just a few dollars in their pockets.

On a recent afternoon, three men walked through the door during one particular hour. One middle-aged man took a look at the half-dozen or so glass cases filled with valuable silver, gold and other metals, though the wood paneling on the walls somehow make the pieces feel more attainable. A whitebeard in a tan coat takes a seat near one of the cases and rummages through items that recently came into the store. Both men chat briefly with Cortez, an amiable extrovert who enjoys conversation.

Then a burly, college-aged kid bursts through the door as if he were pulling around the edge and about to strike a linebacker.

“There’s Nick,” Cortez said, interrupting a few-minutes-long conversation about this particular famous regular.

Nick Allegretti greets everyone in the store, as many do at the barbershop or the local pub. The 6-foot-4, 320-pound 22-year-old immediately looks into one of the cases, presses a button that scrolls the case's contents and locks onto Cortez’s display of Morgan silver dollars. Allegretti, an Illinois football offensive lineman, is trying to finish his Morgan collection.

“The ’84 CC, that’s a tougher date,” Allegretti said. “All the CCs are hard.”

Sure, Nick, sure. He kindly explains to a guest that CC means Carson City, Nev., the city in which it was minted.

“Some are easier than others,” Allegretti said. “It’s a great set. It’s a really good set to have.”

Allegretti explains how he got into coin collecting in middle school and started the hobby by just rummaging through his change.

“You really find them more than you would think,” Allegretti said. “I loved it. I still do it now. Every time I get change, I look through it real quick.”

He discusses one of his greatest finds — a Roosevelt dime in his parents' house.

“There had been on a little ledge on our back door, there’d been a dime stuck there, and I was like, ‘You know what? I’m just going to pull it out,’” Allegretti recalled. “Not worth a ton, but I pulled it out and it was a 1963 silver Roosevelt dime and it had been sitting there for as long as I can remember. It was just sitting under a little ledge. That was pretty cool.”

Allegretti spends most of the week studying finance and Big Ten defenses. Workouts, practice, recovery, school and several community service projects. Allegretti's schedule doesn’t include much free time.

But the Illini senior usually finds time to stop into Specialty Coin & Stamp once a week. Sometimes, he stays for five to 10 minutes, just to pick up something he ordered from Cortez. Other times, he spends hours in the quaint shop nestled among several popular downtown Champaign bars.

Regardless of the length of his stay, the experience at the coin shop allows Allegretti to hit the reset button. Or maybe it's the pause button. Or maybe it's the mute button. Maybe it's all of them.

“This is my getaway, absolutely,” Allegretti said. “I get away from coaches, get away from everything. What I love is that no one else does this. I love my family, girlfriend, everything, but they’re not into this. So this is my thing that I can just get away.

“If I’m ever stressed out or whatever, my dad will send me a text and say, ‘Just go to the coin store.’ I’ll do it, and I love it because if I have the time of the day to come here for a couple hours, I don’t look at my phone. Sometimes people get mad at me because I don’t respond to them, but I put my phone in my pocket and don’t look at it.”

While most college football players use their free time on video games or binge-watching the latest Netflix hit, Allegretti likes to escape the campus rush for a while. The shop has helped him stay fresh through five frantic, fun, stressful, rewarding years.

“I get the impression that when he comes here, it’s an escape,” Cortez said. “It’s kinda like a way to recharge and relax, but it’s also a serious hobby. All of us recharge in different ways.”

'It's just a bond we have'

Carl and Tammy Allegretti are the parents who show up to everything. They never miss a game, of course — including every road game. But the Allegrettis, who live two hours north of Champaign in south suburban Frankfort, also are the parents who frequent football practices, the open training camp practices in August or a random November morning session. Carl this week visited practice and took out Nick, his youngest son, for breakfast.

But the Allegrettis also do more than just show up. Before every game, they show up with gifts for Nick.

Nick’s older brother— Joey, 26— gives his brother two Tootsie Pops before every game. Before road games, Carl gives Nick a Rubik’s Cube — Nick solves them to calm himself and focus before games.

But Carl and Joey also hand Nick something even more special before each home game. During the team’s “Illini Walk” through Grange Grove, Joey usually gives Nick three wheat pennies (pennies made from 1909 to 1958 that can have a value of a few cents to more than $10 depending on their condition). Carl usually gives Nick a coin with some special meaning, sometimes custom-made coins. Nick stores the pieces in his locker before every game.

The Allegrettis show their love by giving Nick something he loves.

“We have our weird traditions,” Carl said. “I know he likes it. It’s just a bond we have.”

Said Cortez: "There's some families that maybe forgot about the extra touch. I hate saying that because I wish everybody had an upbringing with the extra touch. I guess that's what's fun and nice, they know what their family members are into and like."

For the Grapple in the Grove event earlier this month — the Illini wrestling team had an outdoor meet against Missouri outside Memorial Stadium before the football team’s game against Minnesota — Carl gave Nick, a great high school grappler, a wrestling coin. For an October game, Carl gave Nick a Halloween-themed coin. Before each season starts, Carl gives Nick a coin from the Big Ten Championship Game, that season's goal.

“Nothing too thoughtful,” Carl says humbly. “Nicky and I have a great relationship. That’s what we do.”

Carl is wildly successful in the accounting field. He once was the CEO and Chairman of Deloitte Tax LLP. He is the managing partner of the Chicago practice of the Deloitte US firm. Each Saturday at Memorial Stadium, there aren’t many people in the stadium who have been more successful in their fields than Carl Allegretti. He and Tammy, an Illinois grad, donated $250,000 for the $80 million football training facility that is currently under construction.

But if you met Carl, you would never suspect his wealth. Maybe it’s his thick Chicago accent that makes him seem more like a blue-collar laborer than a white-collar leader. Maybe it’s that he asks you about your kid within two seconds of extending his thick paw in a greeting. But it’s probably because Carl talks most proudly of his kids: Joey, who fought and beat leukemia as a child, got married this summer (with Nick as best man) and now works in mergers and acquisitions in Chicago; and Nick, who has earned Academic All-Big Ten honors three times, is an All-Big Ten candidate for his on-field prowess and is up for several awards for his commendable community service efforts.

Carl always makes sure to tell you to enjoy the time while your kids are young “because it goes by too fast.” He certainly has enjoyed his time watching Nick, even if Illinois leadership’s mistakes robbed Nick of having great team success on the field. Carl said he will struggle with Saturday’s final home game.

“I’m depressed," Carl said with a laugh. "But you know what? At tough as it’s been at certain times, it’s been a great experience. I’ve had a lot of good times, and I’ll continue to be a really big fan.”

But he’ll give Nick one more coin, a football-themed coin with three numbers custom-engraved on it that have special significance.

Carl, who collected sports cards as a kid and now collects sports memorabilia, said each coin he gifts isn’t all that important to him. He just wants to show his son love by giving him something he enjoys. But maybe one day, he said, the coins will be important to Nick.

“The coin is just a transfer from one hand to another," Carl said. "What I will remember of Illinois is watching every single play. It’s not about the coin. It’s not about the Rubik’s Cubes. It’s about watching my son play Division-I football, and I’ve had a great time in watching him mature. He saves everything. So at some point in time, years from now when I’m long gone, he’ll have those coins, and he’ll say, ‘These are coins I got from my dad before every game.’ He will have them.”

'He always wants more knowledge'

Teammates give Allegretti some grief for his somewhat "nerdy" hobby and that he's part of the Champaign-Urbana Coin & Currency Club.

“It’s absurd. He always has coins,” sophomore offensive tackle Alex Palczewski said. “I lived with him in the summer, and you walk through his room, and it is obscene. It’s just coins on coins. Most of us like video games or just chilling. But he loves going to that store.”

Said junior running back Reggie Corbin: “Nicky’s weird. Nicky is weird. But that’s what makes him him. He’s smart, very smart. But he’s definitely a weird guy. He’s weird in a good way. I’ve never seen a person do that."

Allegretti is a history buff. Outside of Family Guy, most of his TV viewing centers on sports or The History Channel: historical documentaries, Pawn Stars, American Pickers, etc. His parents fostered that historical passion with trips to Civil War reenactments and even a trip to Gettysburg.

A constant presence on his favorite shows and in his studies of the Civil War: coins.

“My love of history kinda got me into it,” Nick said. “I’m different. I’m just a different kinda guy. I love it. I don’t know why.”

The son of someone so successful in the financial industry — his mother, Tammy, was a certified public accountant and his brother also is a CPA — Allegretti is attracted to the investment side of coin collecting too.

Nick started small in high school by visiting a local coin shop near his Frankfort home. He purchased coin-collecting magazines, of which he is now subscribed to about a half dozen. When he got to college, Nick said his hobby died off a bit as he focused on football and school (accounting major). But a few years into school, he looked up local coin shops and found Specialty Stamp & Coin. Ever since then, he has been a student of the craft.

“His knowledge, he can never get enough,” Cortez said. “He always wants more knowledge.”

Nick’s collection has grown substantially over the last three years, and he now is a full-blown numismatist (he claims as much in his newly created Twitter account). He has a small safe in his apartment, but he has a much larger safe at home. His parents are building a new house, and Nick said he’ll have a safe as large as a closet there. Asked how much his collection is worth, Nick and Cortez struggle to come up with a number, even though they say many non-collectors ask the same question.

“There’s an investment and I could resell the stuff if I wanted to,” Nick said, “but I collect it for the collection itself not because of the value.”

Asked if it’d be accurate to call his collection worth tens of thousands of dollars, Nick says, “Yeah, that's fine.”

Six figures?

“No, not that much, yet,” he said.

'This is what I want to do'

Nick Allegretti has just a few more games left in an Illini uniform. But his goal is to play football, his No. 1 passion, for as long as he is able in order help him pursue his other passion for the rest of his life.

While Allegretti isn’t a certainty to get drafted, the All-Big Ten candidate assuredly will be in an NFL training camp next summer. He is a powerful, smart, physical prospect, and his versatility — he can play guard or center —will help him. He must answer questions about his quickness and athleticism during pre-draft workouts, though Allegretti said he hopes to work out next year before and after the draft with one of his football idols: former Bears center Olin Kreutz.

Allegretti loves football and he’s good at it. But he’s always thinking several steps ahead. If football doesn’t work out, he’ll pursue the CPA exam and accountancy route or maybe even a career in wealth management.

But he said his ultimate goal is to follow in Cortez's footsteps.

“Mark basically did what I plan for my life,” Allegretti said before turning to Cortez. “Basically tell him your story because that’s kinda what I want to do — with football in the middle.”

Mark obliges. He starts with a guiding philosophy from his parents.

“My mom and dad kept saying, ‘You got 20 years to make a lot of money. Do you want to do it in your 20s and 30s, 40s and 50s or 60s and 70s?’” Cortez said. “Then they would always show me different people around me as examples. They said, ‘Do something you can do well in.’ So I went into mortgage banking. I never wanted to do that. I wanted to do this (own a coin shop), but I needed the money to do it.”

Cortez spent 16 years in mortgage banking and also invested in several properties to give him more stability and another source of income.

“When my wife and daughter stick their hand out, I got to pay out,” Cortez said with a smile.

Meanwhile, Cortez kept walking into Specialty Stamp & Coin as he had since he was a boy. Gary Dayton had owned the shop and fostered Cortez’s love for the hobby. Dayton planned to sell the shop to Cortez in 2020, but Dayton was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and moved to Texas, forcing the transaction to happen sooner than either wanted. But Cortez knew he had to act.

“If I didn’t get it, I wasn’t going to get my dream again,” Cortez said. “It wasn’t the way we planned it, but I did it because if someone else was going to buy it, I was never going to do this again.”

After spending so much time in the shop with Cortez talking football, relationships (Nick has been dating his high school sweeheart, Christina, for five years and she often goes to the shop for gifts for Nick), the economy and everything in between, Allegretti is attracted to Cortez’s lifestyle: self-employment, investing in other ways and spending days talking with fellow avid coin collectors from all walks of life.

“What’s fun is you get to hear all these different stories and everybody gets along, just because it’s a common interest,” Cortez said.

So maybe someday, some young man will walk into a coin shop and will be greeted by a burly, intelligent, welcoming former Illini football player sitting behind the glass cases.

“This is what I want to do. I want to open up a store,” Allegretti said. "I just learn as much as I can every time I come. It’s just kinda what I want to do. I love the finance world and I love all that, but just doing something that I’m passionate about — outside of football, this is probably the thing I’m most passionate about in the world. If I could do that for a living, that’d be nuts.”

'There's a story behind it'

Nick Allegretti is one of those kids that just stayed out of trouble. His parents said they hope it’s due to their influence and because they made sure he was always busy. But Carl admits that Nick's Lincoln-Way East High School coaches also played a big role. Carl said Nick was afraid of disappointing his wrestling and football coaches as much as, if not more than, his parents.

“We were really lucky in that way,” Carl said.

Carl said Nick wasn’t perfect but said Nick rarely got into the mischief of most high school kids. Wrestling and football kept Nick pretty busy. Add on his coin-collecting hobby — trips to coin shops and coin shows — and Nick had little time or energy for getting into too much trouble.

That’s why Carl continues to support Nick’s hobby.

“You and I have both seen kids not take full advantage of the opportunity they have at the University of Illinois,” Carl said. “It is a huge opportunity. You got to be careful. I appreciate what Mark has done for him. It is Nicky’s safe place. You’ve seen Nicky grow. Let me tell you, my friend, he’s been under a lot of pressure the last two years and just to be able to walk in there and check out, it’s nice to see.”

Allegretti signed with Illinois coach Tim Beckman in 2014 and redshirted his first year. A week before his first game, Beckman was fired following an investigation into allegations of abuse. Days before spring 2016 practice was to begin, Bill Cubit — who had signed a two-year deal with interim leadership after serving as interim coach the previous season — was fired by new athletics director Josh Whitman, who then hired Lovie Smith.

Allegretti has had three offensive coordinators and three offensive line coaches during his five seasons in Champaign.

Under Smith during the last three seasons — of which Allegretti has started every game (34 straight) — Illinois has a 9-25 overall record, including a 4-21 Big Ten record. Allegretti has yet to play in a bowl game, and Illinois (4-6, 2-5 Big Ten) must pull off upsets over Iowa (a 20-point favorite on Saturday) and Northwestern (the Big Ten West Division champion) to clinch his first bowl appearance before Allegretti runs out of eligibility.

Allegretti could’ve transferred, but he stayed true to the orange and blue, wanting to set a foundation to allow Smith’s program to take off after he is gone. Allegretti has served as a team captain the last two years and been a very positive influence on the four other starters on the offensive line — all sophomores.

Under first-year offensive coordinator Rod Smith, Illinois has improved from the Big Ten’s worst rushing attack to the second-best, only a few yards per game behind Wisconsin. Allegretti will leave big shoes to fill, but he thinks Larry Boyd, who started nine games as a freshman last year but is sitting out this season due to an academic redshirt, is more than capable of filling his spot and continuing the group’s growth.

“That o-line has two more years that they’re going to start next to each other,” Allegretti said. “Obviously, the growth probably won’t be as big because they went from where they were to very good offensive linemen, but they’re going to grow again as juniors and again as seniors. Reggie (Corbin)’s got another year. Mike (Epstein)’s got two more years. Dre (Brown)’s coming back for another year. We have a lot of young talent. Looking at the team — and of course, I want to have success while I’m here — but you want to leave a better product than you came into. That’s what I hope.”

Those inside the Illinois athletics program heap praise on Allegretti, including the guy at the top.

“We don’t have a lot of seniors, but we have the right seniors, and Nick clearly is at the front of that pack,” Illinois athletics director Josh Whitman said. “He is a guy who’s been through an incredible amount here, a number of different coaches, coordinators, position groups and he has persevered. He has demonstrated to everybody what being an Illinois student-athlete is all about. He has embraced the expectations not only on the field but in the classroom, in the community and he’s an unbelievable role model for our younger plays and also for our younger fans. I’m just excited for him that the team has had more success this year and to see them running the football the way they are, he deserves a lot of credit for the leadership he’s brought our offensive line unit, and I’m looking forward to continuing to celebrate his legacy.”

Some coins are valued only for the actual physical mass of their metal. Some coins are valued for their attractiveness. Rarity is most valued. People want to hold something few others have.

But Cortez also values the stories behind every piece that walks under his green awning and through his door.

To the outside, Allegretti may not be the rarest of talents and his Illini career may not seem to have a lot of surface value (i.e. wins).

But for Illinois, Allegretti’s impact at Illinois is a priceless piece that should long be displayed and celebrated, like one of the prized pieces Allegretti often ogles in Cortez's shop.

“It doesn’t matter what an object is or what someone is selling or showing, there’s a story behind it,” Cortez said. “There’s some people who like the story as much as the product. But a lot of people, what I’m starting to realize, don’t talk about the story because they don’t have enough knowledge about the particular item they're selling. …When you buy something that’s a certain piece, the story behind it is just as exciting and fascinating.”