This week, our eBay account surged past the 50,000 positive feedback mark. Unfortunately, no balloons fell from the ceiling, no one walked through the door with a big check cut for us and no band played. I just happened to notice earlier in the week when I was shipping out our weekly mountain of packages.
I know there are others in the collectible space with higher numbers but for a small down shop with only a couple of people shipping the majority of those orders, it’s pretty good–and we’ve really only been at it for about five years.
New/Late Arrivals
As always, we get (or at the very least try really, really hard to get) the most popular new sports card releases each week. This week we got a large quantity of the new 2022 Prizm Draft Picks Basketball boxes.
Yes, this is a product centered on the current NBA rookies– in their college uniforms– arriving halfway through the season. These are the types of boxes you looked forward to in past years because they were the first featuring that season’s rookies to arrive on the market. They were usually released before the season or right at the very beginning. If you had to get your hands on a hot rookie early, these where the products you grabbed. Now we are lucky to get them before the NBA Finals. Since we’ve already seen multiple brands featuring rookies in their pro uniforms, the appeal seems marginal, even at a relatively modest $160-$170 per box.
I don’t know that the cycle and flow of card releases will ever get back on track. It’s going to come down to one of two (or both) things happening. Products will have to be released a faster clip or products will have to be eliminated altogether. I don’t see either of those things happening any time soon.
Pigskin Prospects?
Although the Super Bowl wrapped up the current NFL season, there is no shortage of other professional football on our TV screens now. The USFL will be taking the field in a few weeks and the XFL debuted this weekend. It’s great to see players whose NFL careers didn’t quite pan out or, in some cases, opportunities weren’t presented have a chance to excel at the professional level. It’s also pretty cool to be able to dig through our common boxes or leftover team piles to find some of these guys that might end up being stars in the new leagues.
He’s Back
Our weekly interaction with our customer who has the truck loads of 5,000 count boxes for us to peruse continued this week.
The boxes and cards seem to be getting weaker and weaker so here’s hoping his last few rounds can finish this interaction strong. It’s always a mixed bag of sports and years. At least he did keep everything in toploaders.
Even if the the value of some of the stuff produced in the 1980s and 90s isn’t there, it’s always fun to find cards of now retired players that I’ve interviewed, spoken to or even consider friends now.
Our seller even brought in more cured meats as a thank you for spending time with his stuff but I feel like last week’s imagery pretty much covered that aspect.
Show Day
There was yet another local card show on Saturday. The Susquehanna Valley Mall has been bringing the consistent shows to local collectors on a pretty regular basis. The past few shows have been a little bit on the smaller side with fewer tables than we saw during the latter part of the pandemic. My daughter Isabella loves to collect and had really been looking forward to going to the show. She asked me numerous times over the past few weeks if we could go. Of course, we were down there first thing in the morning checking out the tables and singles and boxes of cards and she was in heaven.
I purchased two cards for my PC and we picked up about 20 cards mainly Pittsburgh Pirates and Pittsburgh Steelers for add to her collection.
A Common No More
Since I was a young boy I always really looked forward to NBA All-Star weekend. As an old man, that hasn’t really changed all that much. It was great watching the skills challenge and the three-point and dunk contests on Saturday night.
Needless to say, the guy who was tossed into the dunk contest at the last minute and has spent most of his pro career in the G-League turned out to be the star of the weekend. His dunks and other skills were actually a social media sensation long before Saturday night. I mentioned how spectacular he was last year when he started popping out of the Prizm Draft Picks packs we were opening so it was fun to see him doing it in front of a TV audience around the world.
Based on sales of those cards the last couple of days, it seems a lot of people wanted a little something to remember what was a pretty special night.
Related Stories:
Shop Talk: Low End Sales, Sweet Stickers, Buying Collections, College Commitment
Shop Talk: Dealing with Recent In-Store Theft
Shop Talk: Fired Up for Football
Shop Talk: Frozen PA Tundra, NFL Arrivals and an ‘Average” Week
Shop Talk: Baseball Hall of Fame Snubs, Ongoing Basketball Delays, Hot Seller
Shop Talk: Card Shops, Card Shows, Card (Spread) Sheets
Shop Talk: Prizm, Pre Sales and Power Slams
Shop Talk: Price Barrier Concerns, Restocks and a Young Vintage Card Fan
