Tony Reid offers his weekly dose of happenings inside Sports Zone, the Central Pennsylvania shop where he works.
—–
I know I may sometimes come across as a bit of a Negative Nancy when it comes to the lack of big hits and bang for the customers buck when ripping boxes, packs, and maybe even cases of cards (if your nerves are good enough and your pockets are deep enough). I think that opinion comes from years and years of seeing the horrors of pack and box opening first hand… but that’s not to say that it’s all bad news, fair readers.
In actuality, over the past week or two, I’ve had a number of our regular customers stop and talk to me about some of the very nice pulls they’ve had out of our boxes, most times after they’ve left the shop.
So, being a generally very positive person anyway, I wanted to do my best to shed some light and show some love to some of those better hits.
One of our store’s regular customers, Todd Newcomer, sends me pictures of the hits he lands. Probably our most accomplished big hit hero, he’s pulled a solid number of them from the store. I know I’ve talked about Todd and Shop Talks past, but he seemed to continue to pull fire, so here are some of his recent successes. He snagged a nice 2023 Donruss Optic autograph of Cincinnati Reds young sensation Elly De La Cruz. This pull was as exciting as when De La Cruz steps into the batters box.
He also pulled a 1/1 of MLB Hit King Pete Rose out of a recently purchased Donruss Baseball box. The Mr. 3,000 insert set paid homage to the best hitters in history and those that crossed the magical 3,000 career hit plateau.
Who doesn’t get a little excited when they see that cursive 1 of 1 font?
John Cole, who comes in and buys baseball pretty heavily, is also a fan of the Jersey Fusion product. That product is one that features already existing cards sealed in a One Touch mag with an authentic, genuine game or practice used item from some of the biggest athletes to ever lace them up. Just Friday, John brought in an amazing 1992-93 Shaquille O’Neal Topps RC encased with three multicolored swatches of Shaq from a rookie year worn uniform (Look at those beautiful black, blue, silver Magic colors…and the Champion logo).
I know people think certain ways about Jersey Fusion but what the company attempted to do was bring the authenticity back to our once prized and valued jersey pieces. This example, numbered 1 out of 5 total copies is a great representation of the product. I almost added it to my personal collection.
At the National, one collector landed a $20,000 bounty from Dave & Adam’s after pulling a Mickey Mantle 1961 World Series pants laundry tag from a Jersey Fusion product at the show.
A gentleman that I used to play Little League Baseball and Flag Football with (and a guy I actually graduated high school with) Chad Frantz has stopped in recently with his son as they’ve gotten back into sports card collecting. He bought a 2023 Topps Baseball blaster this week and pulled a really nice Father’s Day numbered Shohei Ohtani card, out of 299 issued copies.
As we’re talking about recent big hits, I wanted to give an update on our good buddy Steve Wilkerson, who finally secured his beautiful Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani dual on card autographed card from 2023 Topps Heritage. He brought it in early this week to show us first-hand.
You might recall the story of the card being rerouted by FedEx to a Dollar General pickup location. He basically camped out there for hours and, after growing frustration, eventually went into the store as the item had not been tracked as delivered. But as he’s standing at the counter, amid piles of padded envelopes and boxes waiting for pickup he spied his long-awaited package. Yes, a dual Trout/Ohtani worth five figures was sitting there at the checkout with the Twizzlers and Skittles. 
Luckily, no one managed to walk off with it before he got it in his possession.
Another regular, Darren, who seems to stop in late in the day on Saturday to buy football, 99 percent of the time, has noted a number of big hits out of our products recently, including some really nice, low, numbered and even pulling his own 1/1’s out of Optic Football. Unfortunately, I don’t have any pictures of any of his great pulls but it was during our conversation last Saturday that I decided to share that there are some success stories out there.
Much like Jim Carrey’s character Lloyd Christmas and his chances with the miles out of his league Mary Swanson played by Lauren Holly in the film Dumber and Dumber, I’m telling you there is a chance of you hitting big when you dig into a box. I, now and forever, will still suggest just buying the card you want.
Have a wonderful week. I will be checking back in again soon.
Related Stories:
Shop Talk: The Future (of Baseball) is Bright
Shop Talk: Promotion Drives Black Friday Hobby Shop Traffic
Shop Talk: Holiday Shopping and Shipping, Employee Appreciation, PSA 10 Packs
Shop Talk: Trout Swimming Downstream, Football Figures, New Arrivals
Shop Talk: 1986-87 Fleer Jordan RC Submission, Whatnot Wonders, Local Theft Hits Store Radar
10 Players And Cards To Watch In The Second Half
Notes: September Grading Numbers, T206 Cobb Record, Brandon Crawford’s Collection
Shop Talk: Hot Hands, Buying Slabs, Ohtani Allegations
