To say it was an interesting week at the shop would be a massive understatement.
We had some of our pretty run of the mill memorable sports card moments, with some popular new releases. We had a nice walk-in…and we had a couple of visits from the police.
Let’s start with the new arrivals.
We saw the brand new 2023 Sage Low Series Football hobby boxes make their way to our shelves. Sage is generally the first football product to hit the market in the new year but it’s so early we don’t know where the guys in it will play–if at all–on the next level. The company offers a pile of autographs in each box featuring some of the first cards of college players who could be draft picks and now even current college players. You might hit a first rounder or you might hit a guy who is already working at Walmart.
Ohio State quarterback C.J. Stroud is the cover boy and biggest name in the low series product. One of our best customers opened a box and scored a massive 32 autos in a box that advertises 16. Yes, 32–double the promised amount. Sage may not be everyone’s cup of tea but if you like autographs and fresh faces, it definitely has a niche at a little over $100 per box and this break was a pretty cool way to introduce it to our customers.
We also saw the flagship NBA Hoops product make its way to our shop. The 2022-23 version is the first product to have the new NBA rookies in their professional uniforms.
2022 Panini National Treasures Baseball hobby boxes made a plate appearance this week, too. They sold very well online and one of our employees opened a box this week. More on that later.
As we say all the time, you never know what’s going to walk in the store and a pretty spectacular vintage basketball set walked in this week. We had the opportunity to purchase a beautiful 1970-71 Topps Basketball set with all of the major stars graded and the rest of the set in a nice binder that held tall boy top loaders and sleeves.
I am a huge fan of vintage baseball, basketball and football and a big fan of Pete Maravich, whose iconic rookie card is found in this set. As soon as we got the set in our hands it made its way out to one of our super collector customers who bought it the same day we got it. I did get to go through the set and appreciate it for a minute before it went out the door, so there’s that. Some vintage sets are as much pieces of art and historical documents as they are basketball cards and I love it each time they come through.
On Tuesday this week we had to call the local law enforcement as someone lifted a $400 Box of 2020 Certified Football off of our back counter.
That was an unfortunate situation I will detail much more in an upcoming piece.
On to more positive news of the week. I mentioned how last week a number of our good customers got some really fun hits and boxes but this week blew that out of the water completely.
Russell, who I mentioned in last week’s piece, came in and bought two boxes of 2022 XR Football. He likes to have me hand pick the boxes so, no pressure there. I did well for him this time around as all of his hits were of stars. The most significant and impressive of the lot was a 1 of 1 NFL shield Terry Bradshaw card.
This was an absolutely beautiful pull and one that had the entire store wide eyed. You don’t see Bradshaw 1/1s too often and for it to be pulled here in Central PA is an added bonus.
As if that wasn’t fun enough, Friday afternoon our employee Matt decided to grab a box of 2022 National Treasures Baseball. He tends to get paid in cards, which I can’t argue with that. The box was opened live and the video uploaded on a YouTube page. Honestly, the box was pretty rough for the first five or six cards and then all of a sudden we hit an absolute monster. Matt is the new, very happy, proud owner of a 2022 National Treasures Apprentice Ink Julio Rodriguez 1 of 1 on card autograph.
This literally had everyone in the store celebrating, as you can hear in our video. Matt deserved a big hit and this is as big as we’ve seen in the store in a long, long time. The Seattle Mariners superstar is a player who has the chance to be the face of the game some day and this pull has the chance to be really special, too.
A quiet Saturday closed the week–definitely one we won’t forget for a while.
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