Tony Reid offers his weekly dose of happenings inside Sports Zone, the Central Pennsylvania hobby shop where he works.
—–
I’ve been excited to see more and more people bringing in items into the shop for us to look at and potentiall buy. You never know what’s going to come in and even if we don’t make a deal, we always try to be courteous to those who take the time to stop in.
This week, I had a gentleman drop off a number of autographed baseballs for me to check out. These were classic 1980s and 90s right down to the plastic holders with gold and wooden bases.
Some looked good but many had COAs I didn’t recognize, and then there were a few that would have sat in the shop for years before they sold. We ultimately passed on this deal.
Later, I had a woman and her son stop in with some very undesirable cards. It was just piles of 80s stuff we can’t move. However, while thumbing through it all, she said she had something else in the car to show me.
She came back in with a cool pair of Grant Hill Sprite sneakers from the 1990s in the original box as well as an unopened jersey and shorts from the same promotion. She had the whole kit. Hill did all kinds of Sprite commercials and ads early in his NBA career (you might remember Sprite’s NBA trading card set, too).
Although we don’t do much in the way of sports culture as I would like, I was more than happy to make an offer on the package. After she feigned ignorance, she actually told me she went on StockX and saw that the shoes were selling for $250. That may be but they can actually be had on eBay for less than half of that.
Ultimately, we didn’t come to terms, but if we had, I would have definitely shown up dressed as Grant Hill the next day at work.
Pirate Purchases
Our longtime customer Graiden, who used to work for us, has his own sports card business rolling full steam ahead. He and I keep in regular contact and we’re always buying and selling and trading. Generally, when I deal with him, it’s something for my PC, so when he stopped in on Friday with his little Zion case, I was immediately interested. He’s been holding on to a 2003 Playoff Contenders Troy Polamalu rookie auto that I’ve had my eye on.
We couldn’t really come to an agreement over the past month or so (due to his price tag and the slightly faded auto), but it happened this week. I scooped that up along with a Topps Chrome Sapphire Gold Refractor rookie of Paul Skenes numbered to just 50, a second Skenes rookie and a 2024 Bowman Draft First Purple Refractor auto of mega prospect Konnor Griffin numbered out of 250. Griffin is the number one prospect in baseball but has fallen off a bit at the end of spring and won’t make the Buccos Opening Day roster. That may cool the interest in his cards for a little while, but there’s every reason to believe his future is bright–and he’s only 19.
I generally don’t roll the dice on unproven prospects but with him being a Pittsburgh Pirate, I made an exception. Fingers crossed.
Fake Slab
We have a more and more regular customer who comes in late in the afternoon buying Pokémon cards for his kids as well as basketball from time to time. He buys out local storage units and also conducts home clean outs on a regular basis. He’ll always have something fun to show me, whether its sports related or artifacts from World War II, like he did on Friday. He admitted that he doesn’t find sports cards often but he comes across Pokémon once in a while.
This week he brought an interesting piece in for me to see it was a counterfeit PSA graded Pokémon card. Authentic copies of this Pikachu sell between $6,000 and $8,000. As I held it, I could tell the case wasn’t authentic. A few of the PSA safeguard holograms weren’t right and a few details of the card were off. To the untrained eye or when only looking at photos online, it would probably fool a lot of people. 
It was useful and interesting to see this in person and compare it to other PSA slabs in the store and something will definitely keep our eye on. Hopefully, there’s not a huge quantity of counterfeits in our area.
I was off Saturday that didn’t stop cool cards from walking into the shop. Felix and Tyson were working and early in the afternoon, Tyson sent me pics of a few cards to see if I would be interested. It was two autographed prospect cards of New York Yankees slugger Aaron Judge. I made a play on both, but the owner wasn’t willing to deal. Even if I’m out of the store, I’m beyond happy to get pics like these and try to made out of person deals.
Boxing Day
We stock large quantities of BCW white cardboard boxes in varieties from 100-count up to five-row boxes and pretty much every single size in between. I’m not sure how other shops or collectors feel but in recent weeks and months, it seems to us like the quality has slipped. The cardboard seems thinner and more fragile. The dividers for all the two, three, four and five rows has become almost like a wet noodle, and overall, they just flat out haven’t been the high quality we’d come to expect.
Early in the week, we had a stack of white boxes to assemble, and as I was assembling them, I noticed how nice the cardboard felt. It felt thick and strong and like a different product. Well, it turns out it was a completely different product. We had bought some from Woodhaven Trading Firm and let me tell you, they are spectacular. Don’t get me wrong, we still stock endless BCW products but it sure is nice to have another box option if need be.
I’ll be walking back in the door Monday morning, and I’ll keep you posted on how my week transpires.
