This store and website are owned and operated by Gary Brunger, an avid card game enthusiast, card game instructor, club organizer, and playing card importer. The name "TaroBear" is actually only a screen name (he does not wish for people offline to call him that). The screen name was adopted a few years before the store opened, and was used on several European card game sites, mainly those featuring one of Gary's favorite games, the French version of the game of Tarot.
In January, 2008, the "doors" opened on a new ebay store called TaroBear's Lair. Originally, it was intended to be a place where people in the US could obtain French Tarot Nouveau card decks with which to play the popular French card game, Jeu de Tarot. A local club called the North East Ohio Tarot Players was also started in March, to teach and promote the game. In time, Italian, Swiss, and Austrian versions of the Tarot deck were added to the store, and finally, a vast array of regular European playing card patterns, as well as a few accessories and a couple of books, were introduced, making TaroBear's Lair your one-stop European playing card superstore.