Tony Reid offers his weekly dose of happenings inside Sports Zone, the Central Pennsylvania shop where he works.
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It was a fun week full of new sports card releases to offer our collectors and their feedback is always interesting to hear.
We scored a nice quantity of various forms of 2022 Topps Update Baseball, including blasters, hobby and hangers. The classic flagship line always sells well and this year’s version is no different. We sold through our hobby and blaster boxes already. Check out our upcoming Brief Box Break to see what we pulled from the blaster we opened in store.
2021-22 Select Basketball blasters bounced into the shop this week, too. It has been a steady seller but Select has been rejected by some collectors due to its retail heavy availability and its lack of many serial numbered cards that have been found in previous years. There’s a belief among collectors that these former mid-level products are being distributed in large amounts with most singles on the secondary market cheaper than ever.
2022 Optic Baseball hit the shelves this week. It’s a tricky product as Optic is still a strong name in the hobby and one that carries some weight with many collectors. The obvious Optic brand awareness is strong but the problem is that this is a baseball product, so you’ll only find blank helmets, jerseys and otherwise air brushed away logos. Each box promises two autographs and we have some in store and online at $123. Some don’t mind the lack of logos as long as they’re guaranteed multiple autographs while others won’t touch them.
Added to the same weekly lineup card as Optic Baseball, 2022 Allen & Ginter is now available at the shop. We had a few customers that were quite unhappy with the collation and lack of autographs in the product. One of our regular (and very upbeat and positive) customers opened a case and was really unhappy with the mem heavy turnout.
We were steady in store all week but Saturday took the busy to another level as we sold out of a pretty wide array of our sports card products. Our signs were the only thing left.
Sometimes, those sellouts don’t always involve a profit. 2022 Panini Mosaic Baseball hobby boxes are gone but when we’re essentially forced to move them for just barely above our cost it’s not something to write home about.
Our holiday sales continued to climb this week. We’ve been selling piles of mini helmets (we even shipped one to former Colts and current Bills running back Nyheim Hines recently), NFL figures, cases, boxes, packs and single cards. As is likely the case with most hobby shops around the country, this time period is great for business and we try to make sure we’re well stocked.
We’ve also put discount boxes of single cards on the counter at extremely cheap price points this week. We have a dollar box, a 50 cent box and other inexpensive options for collectors to thumb through on our showcases. They’re just as popular in our shop as they are at card shows across North America.
Being a Chicago Bears fan I had a conversation with a young collector that warmed my heart this week. He was trying to decide whether he wanted to buy 2021 or 2022 football products based, in large part, on the rookie classes. Well, of course, I threw out there that he could possibly pull some nice Justin Fields rookie year stuff in 2021 products and he actually said that was one of the players he would be happy to get. It’s been quite a long time since any non-Bears collectors were excited to pull Bears rookies out of current products.
As a collective, I think fans are excited for the future with this dynamic young playmaker as our signal caller and next level athlete and playmaker.
It was an entertaining and busy week, so I was more than happy to get out of town and head to Pittsburgh with the family to take my son to his very first NFL game on Sunday.
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