Last week began with the shop’s owner on vacation and a pile of nearly 300 online orders greeting us upon arrival Monday morning. Our order fulfillment system works in such a great way that we knocked them all out in record time without actually feeling like we processed that many.
Also greeting me on Monday was evidence of the owner’s purchase of a junk wax era collection. As I walked into the store Monday morning, there was a 1986 Topps Baseball set in nine pocket pages for sale, a few factory sets from over 20 years ago and this Shawn Kemp Hoops rookie card atop our glass display case. This one screams early ’90s collecting, with the over the top prismatic screwdown holder and an official player nameplate across the bottom, encapsulating this beautiful, magnificent…25-cent card.
All joking aside, I really enjoy looking at this gem sitting on our countertop and we’ve had a bunch of customers comment on it, so maybe we will eventually move it for a dollar.
One of my recent interviews that appeared on Sports Collectors Daily was well received by one of our best customers Steve Wilkerson. Steve might be the biggest Packers supercollector that I personally know. He’s an encyclopedia of the team’s history and has a breathtaking and ever-growing collection of memorabilia, cards and everything you can imagine. He liked my recent Kenny Stills, Sr. interview so much that he bought both of us Stills signed 8 by 10s that he surprised me with midweek. Steve’s been one of my favorite people in the shop as we’ve had lengthy sports card conversations and share in the love of vintage football and Golden Retrievers, among other things.
Although we didn’t get any crazy new releases this week, we did get nice restocks that I priced and put on the shelf Thursday afternoon. We scored a case of the new Wild Card Automania with the pro style jerseys within the product. It has been a pretty slow seller to this point.
Later in the week two of our best young customers were trying to find something to buy in our showcases and in our slabs. I’m little embarrassed to say that the vast majority of the cards displayed are way overpriced. Pricing and comping is not my particular area of responsibility, so it was a little sad to see these cards so out of whack. I’m not happy to say that we had a Kenny Pickett in the case for a $190, with the most recent sale being just over 40 bucks. A Josh Allen rookie was listed for twice what’s its worth. The same goes for a few Shohei Ohtani rooks. I would hope this would be one of our first orders of business next week- repricing the showcases and the sealed boxes of cards.
Saturday was a bit of a slow day as there was a card show relatively close to us. In actuality, I would have rather been there wheeling and dealing. We sold a few cards in store out of our value boxes and other low end sales of that nature. A local online breaker was in looking to buy some goodies to fill his breaks and couldn’t quite pull the trigger on some of our singles for the reasons I mentioned earlier. I don’t have the authority to change lower or raise prices, so maybe that’s a conversation we need to have in the near future, as I’m as in tune or more in tune with that aspect of the business than anyone in the store. Otherwise, it was a pretty slow day until we locked the doors up in the afternoon.
With Sunday being the national holiday is the Super Bowl, I was feeling incredibly excited as I headed home and looking forward to consuming football from the moment I open my eyes until the moment I shut them Sunday night.
I hope everyone else enjoys the big day and the aftermath of what’s been a great season.
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