Tony Reid offers his weekly dose of happenings inside Sports Zone, the Central Pennsylvania shop where he works.
—–
My week started out of the shop and in Altoona for my son’s high school senior football banquet. It was a great celebration of a wonderful season and a great group of young men. I was beyond proud of Tyson who was named All Purpose Player of the Year. Next year he’ll have new teammates on the college level.
End of the Holiday Rush
We knew going into the week that online business was going to slow down soon and by midweek people, even the most optimistic of us, realized they won’t be getting newly ordered packages by Christmas morning. We did have an eBay message or two from potential customers asking if we could ‘rush” or overnight packages to them. It’s probably not worth paying the overnight rates to have a $15 item under the tree Sunday morning. It was like the flowing faucet darn near got turned off by Wednesday as our orders through Walmart’s website went from us fulfilling about 100 per day to literally eight that morning. Overall, we were very busy online but that was a pretty eye opening reality mid-week. Most people had gotten their shopping done with time to spare.
At one point this week we looked each other and basically breathed a sigh of relief, as we were happy to get a little breathing room and have at least a small bit of downtime in the shop. Having a moment leads to tackling projects or catching up on various aspects of business that may have been getting neglected over the course of the crazy month. Some of that free time led to us doing a number of box breaks of new sports card products that you can find on our YouTube page or here shortly as new Brief Box Breaks on SC Daily.
You’ve Got a What?
As soon as you think you’ve heard it all you realize you are dead wrong. I had a customer call in this week inquiring about the shop purchasing sports cards. My answer is always the same when we get a call soliciting sales and that is this.. yes we are always buying but it totally depends on what you have to sell, what you’re looking to get for said cards and what the needs are of the shop at the moment. If those stars align we are beyond happy to buy cards that walk in the door. A gentleman asked for me over the phone and proceeded to tell me that he had the 1987 Topps Cal Ripken, Jr. “bullseye card.”
That was a new one on me, so I logged onto eBay and a quick search showed listings that are trying to sell cards that have a print spot on Ripken’s jersey. The sellers are calling it a bullseye error or variation
I personally think all of these types of “errors” or “variations” are a bit over the top. To me it’s just a quirk in a certain part of the printing process but that’s just one man’s opinion. I am not buying 99 percent of these newfound print errors and it’s been my experience that the number of people who are truly collecting things like that is very small. Needless to say, we passed.
Fresh Wax
New sports card releases and restocks were coming in faster and more furious than the 27th Vin Diesel movie as we got a wide array of 2022 Absolute football including gravity feed boxes and packs, blaster boxes and more.
We also saw the arrival of 2022 Topps Chrome Update Baseball hobby and 2022 Topps Chrome Black Baseball. Collectors can find rookie cards of some top young players including Julio Rodriguez,Bobby Witt, Jr. and most of the established stars that switched teams during the season in their brand new uniforms. We also got a very limited supply of 2022 Topps Five Star Baseball.
The new 2022 Prizm NASCAR zoomed into the shop as did the new 2022-23 Upper Deck Hockey blasters. It was great having some fresh products to offer our customers heading into the holidays.
Winter Wins Out
Living in central Pennsylvania as we do, we’re starting to get to the bone chilling cold time of our winter season. We saw some snow on Thursday this week that all but eliminated any walk-in traffic. Things got a little bit hairier on Friday as the massive storm that roared through a large section of the country arrived on our doorstop, dropping the temperature from 40 degrees to single digits with 40 mile per hour winds as an added bonus.
With the hazardous conditions, we actually decided to close the store early Friday and without me working Saturday on Christmas Eve, that pretty much put a wrap on my week. Like a lot of folks in retail this time of year, I was ready for the holiday break. I hope all of you had a relaxing holiday, too, and here’s to a Happy New Year. Thanks for reading my columns all year and letting me share what happens inside our store on a weekly basis. I’ll be back next week with the first 2023 edition of Shop Talk.
Related Stories:
2022 Topps Chrome Platinum Anniversary Baseball Preview
Shop Talk: Comp Questions and Answers
Shop Talk: Connecting and Reconnecting Through Cards
Shop Talk: Vintage Cards, New Releases and New Minty Fresh Repacks
Shop Talk: Anonymous Goodwill, Holiday Party, Sean Clifford, USPS Garbage
Shop Talk: New Arrivals; Lost and Found; Vintage Time Capsule Walk-In
Shop Talk: Dealing with a Challenging Customer in Need of Cash
Shop Talk: Always Buying, Piles of New Releases, A Full Wrasslin’ Section, Watching Ohtani Play in Person
