We sit pretty much right between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh so we have a strong fan base for both cities and all of their respective teams in our store. As you might imagine, Phillies fans have been waiting for a team to get excited about again and Sunday night it finally happened with the team reaching the World Series for the first time since 2009. Bryce Harper, Aaron Nola and Rhys Hoskins are always popular but now collectors are coming in asking for Alec Bohm, Bryson Stott and the rest of the crew.
Sales storewide can really pick up when a local team creates excitement that goes beyond the hard core collector base. I suspect we’ll see some new faces in the shop over the next couple of weeks.
With every major sport being in play at the moment, it’s a great time to be a sports fan and a card collector.
This week at the shop we got the newest wave of Imports Dragon NFL figures. This is a category and a specific product has sold very well for us since we started carrying them a few years ago. What started in baseball and hockey (as pretty generic figures, I might add) eventually expanded into football and the quality of the product grew by leaps and bounds. The figure went from having (old) Starting Lineup vibes to high quality McFarlane vibes.
The newest wave includes rookie figures of Najee Harris and Mac Jones, a second Patrick Mahomes figure, Dak Prescott and the first appearance by Deebo Samuel in action figure form. All of the figures have a more rare chase version which is which is the player featured in an alternate uniform. We have these guys stocked up and mixed in with our other series of the product. There are more figures coming but that is who is our lineup at the moment.
In previous STs, I’ve talked about the repack products we do in house. What started with our Gem Mint boxes expanded to Mint boxes and we’ve now expanded further as weve added to the line with Red Zone boxes.
The Red Zone boxes are the most affordable of the bunch, as they offer single star cards, a pack of older cards and a graded rookie card.
It was another great week for new releases, as the shop received boxes of the always popular Certified Football.
Certified has sold well for us each and every year and we expect the same this time around especially with the price being way down from last year’s product. We have them available for just a tad over $200 when they were going for over $600 this time last year.
We also got the brand new Panini Three and Two Baseball which, aside from being a full count at the plate, is one slabbed autograph and memorabilia card along with one base, one rookie and one insert card. Panini and other unlicensed baseball doesn’t really sell well for us, so we will see how this one goes. We have sold a few but we have more than a few available.
We also brought in some of the new 2022 Bowman Platinum Baseball boxes.
This is another example of our costs lining up fairly well with what they sell for online, so we’re anxious to see if collectors will snap some up and hopefully rip in store.
2022 Topps Luminaries baseball made its way to the shop as well. With a price tag right around $420, this is a higher end product that we will most likely be selling the majority of online.
It was a busy weekend personally as we made the trip to Carlisle for my son’s high school football game on Friday night. We then traveled to Bloomsburg University for an official college game day visit for him on Saturday. He’s enjoying the recruiting process. On Sunday, we drove to Pittsburgh on Sunday to celebrate my daughter’s birthday. I was probably busier on my days off this week than I was in store.
I hope everyone else had a great and busy week, too. I’m looking forward to another memorable one ahead.
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