I’ll start this installment by saying we continued our trend of buying mid to high end rookie slabs over the course of the week. We were able to add some nice eye candy to the showcase, including more high grade 2000 Tom Brady rookie cards, some PSA 10 2010 Topps Rob Gronkowski rookies and even some high-grade versions of Steph Curry’s 2009-10 rookie cards.
Every day is like Christmas morning when our carrier drops off the mail and we can officially add those beauties to the inventory… and eventually send them off to a good home.
The season is winding down for our local Williamsport (PA) Crosscutters baseball team. This is a collegiate summer baseball team of the MLB Draft League. My wife and I wanted to make sure we took our young daughter up to a game before the season was over. We decided to go the Historic Bowman Field Tuesday night and, to my surprise, the place was absolutely jam-packed.
Much to my surprise, one of our regular shop visitors was manning the ticket counter. Like I mentioned, the game was basically sold out but he got us some standing room only spots down the third base line and flowing into left field and Isabella got to see her first game since she was just a few months old.
We covered the art of the slide and she was more than happy to see Boomer and the other mascots in attendance. As an added bonus, it was Topps Tuesday and the Cutters actually gave away a box of 2021 Topps Inception. They also handed out packs of Topps baseball cards at the gate. It’s certainly some very nice exposure for the hobby to thousands of baseball fans and I’m sure the promotion is being done elsewhere. A great time was had by all.
As we headed toward the exit, we bumped into Zack again. He mentioned to me how he would be in (the shop) later in the week with some some heat to sell us and he did deliver on that promise. We were able to buy a great looking stack of modern baseball and football rookies for the shop and I bought a handful of cards for my PC.
We saw our first box of 2021 Panini Immaculate Collegiate Football opened by our guy Noah. He opened the box in store and it was pretty spectacular. He hit a Kyle Pitts card numbered to 3 and a very nice Introductions autograph of the 49ers new potential star quarterback Trey Lance. Being a Notre Dame guy I was excited to see him also land a Tim Brown auto numbered to just 10. And as a Central Pennsylvania guy, I was equally excited to see him pull a nice RPA of former Penn State stud and now Pittsburgh Steelers tight end Pat Freiermuth.
It was such a good box he was tempted to open another one but he managed to hold off on that thought. We would have been happy to see him open another box and more than happy to sell him one.
National Baseball Card Day went into it’s second inning this past Saturday. We offered up the free Fernando Tatis, Jr. card last week and this week the free card was Phillies young slugger Alec Bohm. We had a number of people come in to receive the free card and some made qualifying purchases to get the additional Topps packs.
We had a father and son come from (of all places) Williamsport after they had heard about our store and wanted to come visit. They spent about an hour looking around and purchased a wide range of sports collectibles from Yankee superstars Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton. They bought bubbleheads, mini bobbles, Imports Dragon figures and so much more. It was actually their first trip to the store and they said they’d be back many times in the coming weeks and months. At one point the dad even jokingly asked his son ‘Is this heaven?’
It’s great to hear people so enthusiastic and passionate about sports and sports collectibles. We love meeting new people and gaining their trust to make those new guests customers for life.
