Tony Reid chronicles the happenings inside Sports Zone, the Central Pennsylvania shop where he works.
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It’s always fun when customers bring in their collections or single cards for us to buy.
This week we had a gentleman who finally came in and sealed the deal. For the better part of a year, he’d stop in and mention to me that he had a pretty large collection, insinuating that he was thinking about selling. He told me he had tons of five row boxes, tons of four row boxes, tons of loose cards and yet never ever, ever produced a single solitary card to show us. After hearing this story literally 20 to 30 times, it felt like I was reading The Boy Who Cried Wolf.
I’m beyond happy to go through any cards that people bring in because you just never know what’s going to walk in the shop but the key is that they actually have to take action.
Well, this customer finally brought a number boxes of cards in this week. It took me the better part of an hour to go through all of the madness and apparently that was just a tip of his iceberg. 
This collection was all over the map. As I sorted through the boxes, I found a smorgasbord of cardboard, from vintage tobacco cards to overproduced junk wax era stuff and nearly everything in between.
There were Hall of Famers, mounds of commons, minor league cards, century-old issues…and not just baseball. There were plenty of football cards, too.
We managed to purchase a number of his cards and who knows, maybe he’ll be back with more. I was just happy to finally see that he actually did have what he said he did, even if it wasn’t the most organized collection ever.
Around the Shop
As for regular store business, one trend we’ve seen in the store is the uptick in sales for lower cost products. We’ve sold piles of Sage, Pro Set and Leaf football products recently.
Even if most of the autos aren’t exactly top shelf, if you’re getting 3, 6, 9, 12 or even 16 in a box, collectors appreciate the chance to find at least a few keepers, especially when the prices are nominal compared to all other products on the market.
In other news, there is no news on the recent theft from our shop. I’m not sure that we will ever get any type of closure on this other than the fact of just eating it. Our 2022 Certified Football box and/or our $400 is most likely gone for good. There were a number of people around town that saw the story and asked me for updates over the past week. Its nice to hear that people care but it would be nice if justice were served in some way. Not many of us like a thief.
Our PSA dealer account is going through this coming week, so we will begin to submit large numbers of cards for grading. We are at the $250,000 a year level, so that’s a heck of a lot of submissions from our small shop here in Central PA. I’m really looking forward to get this process rolling.
We are always diversifying our product portfolio inside the sports world (and outside of it) as far as what products we carry. We picked up a new one this week called P.A. Sport Collectible Sports Stamps. We offer sealed packs of the stamp books with a few stickers and a second complimentary product of packs of stamps to fill your books with.
They are similar to the Fatheads that we used to carry and the small Fathead trading cards that sold really well for us, so were hopeful that these guys will move down the field, too. It’s a great product for youngsters and I even took a few packs home for my daughter to reward her when she competes tasks or does good around the house, which is all the time!
It was a solid week for more mainstream new releases at the store. We managed to snag a bunch of the new 2021-22 Mosaic Basketball hobby boxes, only a few 2022 Finest Baseball hobby boxes and a nice amount of 2022 Illusions Football hobby boxes. All of these will appear in my Brief Box Break segment in the very near future, so keep an eye out for those.
Last but not least, on a personal note, I’m now the father of a college football player.
My son Tyson committed to Division II Clarion University this week where he will continue his academic and athletic careers. The Reid household is pretty darn excited about the news. We’re beyond proud of our guy and the hard work he’s put in to get to this position. We’re fully confident that he’ll have a great college experience and we wouldn’t be surprised at all if he’s a star at the next level.
Well, that about wraps up my week. Here’s hoping yours was this fulfilling as mine.
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