Last week got off to an exciting start but it had very little to do with being at the store.
After going in and shipping a weekend’s worth of orders Monday bright and early morning, I left work at lunch time, picked up my wife and headed to Pittsburgh for the Monday Night Football game between the hometown Pittsburgh Steelers and my Chicago Bears.
We made it to Heinz Field about two hours before kickoff and enjoyed some food and light hearted trash talk before heading into the stadium. The atmosphere is always electric there but there is an extra level of excitement for a Monday Night Football game. 
This was the first Steelers game my wife and I had been to in a number of years. We made it to at least one game a season for years but with the pandemic and the birth of our daughter its made it a little more challenging to get away. Aside from a recent Penn State game earlier this year, it was the first live sporting event we had been to in a few years, period. I remember telling her as we were walking to our seats just how absolutely great it was to be back in that atmosphere. Michelle has said it for years now and I will take this time to freely admit it… I’m somewhat of a closet Steelers fan but not when they’re playing my Monsters of the Midway.
We had nice seats by her parents, about 20 rows up from the field in the end zone. I got to see my guy Justin Fields play in person for the first time. The Bears rookie QB showed why he was so highly touted with an impressive second half comeback to nearly pick up the win.
It was an exciting back and forth game with my guys bearing down in the second half and without an absolute railroad job by a completely out of line referee (that directly affected my buddy Cassius Marsh, by the way) the final score could have been different.
I was texting with him after the game and, as you could imagine, he was pretty disappointed with that call and the end result.
We made the quick trip from Pittsburgh back to Johnstown where we crashed at my in-laws for the night and we hit the road early in the morning for the three-hour ride back home. I was in the shop by 10:00 AM ready to ship Tuesday’s orders and get back to reality.
Incoming
Each day of the week we had a few huge restocks of sports and non-sports cards. It was one of the bigger single restocks and weekly that I can remember. That, coupled with the new releases of cards this week, has really filled our shelves to the point where we might need to do some real reorganizing and allotment of our space.
On top of all of the cards flowing in through the back door, we had some flow in the front door with a number of customers bringing in some great singles for us to purchase. One of the highlights was a beautiful One of One from 2021 Certified of the ever popular (and my all-time favorite) Ken Griffey, Jr.
More and more we’ve had customers purchase boxes and packs and come back in to sell us their better hits. That is a winning proposition for us, as long as the price is right. Keeping a fresh and revolving inventory of singles is very important to the success of just about any sports card shop–especially in this market.
We’ve also continued to see a steady stream of online orders from our always busy eBay store but we haven’t hit that level of crazy we’ve been accustomed to in past years. I believe that’s probably on the horizon within the next few weeks as the holidays get closer.
On Friday, a truck rolled up with some big brown cases that allowed us to restock our box selection including 2021 National Treasures Baseball as well as some new Pokémon. We were lucky enough to get a case as well as a few individual boxes of NT. The brand is always a big seller for us, even in a sport where Panini doesn’t have an MLB license.
Getting eight autographs and/or memorabilia cards per Hobby box at less than $575 per box in this market is a pretty decent attraction. We will most likely sell the sealed case as is and list the single boxes individually.
I’m off for the second weekend in a row as I’m taking my oldest daughter to look at a few colleges in the area Saturday. Wish me luck in that endeavor.
