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You are here: Home / Hobby Shop Talk / Shop Talk: Cold Fronts and Hoops Heat

Shop Talk: Cold Fronts and Hoops Heat

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Tony Reid’s weekly Shop Talk segment focuses on the goings-on at the hobby shop he helps manage in Central PA.

Last week started with a bang in what has been the worst snow storm of the season for us. We got hit with a good old nor’easter that threw down over a foot and a half of snow in a relatively short period of time. We actually had our storefront closed both Monday and Tuesday this week due to the weather conditions. Honestly, that meant very little because we are constantly busy fulfilling orders from our eBay store to the tune of hundreds and hundreds per day, regardless of what Mother Nature or Old Man Winter have in mind.

As one might imagine, Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Kansas City Chiefs items have been hot across the board, from cards to jerseys to mini helmets and everything in between. We filled a large number of orders over the past few weeks for the Super Bowl contenders.

As hot as those teams and their products are, it would be tough to top the heat of the newly released 2020-21 NBA Hoops. We managed to secure a few cases from our distributors and they sold immediately online for north of $8,000 a piece. We did keep a few boxes and opened them for packs in the store and people were eating them up like candy.

Being a traditional base rookie card collector as I am, I’m always excited to see flagship products such as Hoops released each season. It only took a few packs to see our first Anthony Edwards rookie card. The customer was pretty happy as they are already selling for a premium online. We got about halfway through the first box before we saw our first LaMelo Ball RC. By the time various customers got to the bottom of the box, another Edwards was pulled. It was a nice numbered parallel that was already bringing over $200 in online auctions. 

Earlier this week we also got the new TriStar Hidden Treasures Game Day Greats autographed football jerseys in stock.

We had the TriStar mini football helmet Platinum blind boxes in the store recently. One of our better customers opened the entire case of helmets, one by one. Aside from a nice Deion Sanders Alternate Speed Florida State Auto mini helmet, the case really left something to be desired.
 
He pulled a John Randle VSR4 Vikings helmet, a Dermontti Dawson Steelers eclipse helmet and a true legend in Steve Largent but it was oddly placed on the current Seahawks Speed style helmet. It would have been far more impressive on the old school, two bar Seahawks helmet Largent donned for much of his record setting career. I guess the same could be said for the Eclipse helmet Dermontti Dawson signed but I digress.
 
Well, the same crazy customer came in and opened an entire case of jerseys one by one. Each case offers a current player which happened to be Dallas Cowboys young wide receiver Michael Gallup. Again, not terrible but not a show-stopper by any stretch.
 
The first Hall of Famer he pulled was former Oilers defensive lineman Robert Brazile. He then proceeded to pull a nice Drew Bledsoe New England Patriots jersey and then a very…interesting… Tiki Barber Jersey. We couldn’t tell if it was his Virginia Jersey or a Giants jersey with the odd color combination of the jersey itself and the collar and sleeves.  In fact, none of the jerseys are actual jerseys as they don’t have team logos or insignias on them anywhere.
 
Make no mistake, it was a fun product to see opened but from what we’ve seen don’t expect to make your money back if you go to sell these jerseys at any point in time. Enjoy them, decorate your office or man cave and take them for what they are- a conversation piece.

One of our baseball diehards and longtime customers, Mr. Troutman, was in this week and picked up 2020 Leaf Metal Draft and the new Donruss Elite Extra Edition baseball. He’s probably our biggest baseball card customer and over the years he’s generally picked up one box of everything we would get in baseball related. That is no exaggeration. On this particular day, he had the Jasson Dominguez hand picking up a numbered jersey in Elite Extra Edition and an auto of the Yankees top prospect in the Metal product. He was very happy and so were we. 

It didn’t feel much like baseball season this week but by the time Friday and Saturday rolled around the weather got a touch warmer and some of those massive piles of snow started melting. I guess baseball season is right around the corner after all. I’m ready for pitchers and catchers. 

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About Tony Reid

From the time he was a little kid, Tony has been a huge sports fan. If he could play sports, watch sports and talk about sports it was a great day. From as early as he was drawn to sports, Tony was drawn to collecting sports cards. Not much has changed over the years. He collects RCs of star players in baseball, basketball and football. He also has a soft spot for first autographs of MMA stars. If you want to talk to Tony about the greatness of Michael Jordan, Bo Jackson or Ken Griffey, Jr. you can reach him at @reidrattlecage on all social media platforms.