Tony Reid’s weekly Shop Talk segment focuses on the goings-on at the hobby shop he helps manage in Central PA.
After some tough late winter days, the weather definitely broke a bit last week with the sun making it look a lot more like spring. Inside, it continues to rain sports cards.
The basketball products continue to fly out of here as soon as they are dropped off by USPS, FedEx or UPS. There are plenty of instances where, if we wanted to, we could just leave them where they are, double box then, slap a label on them and ship them to a customer within the hour.
2020-21 Certified Basketball arrived this week and is showing brisk sales right out of the gate. We have sold a number of packs and boxes in the store and even more online. Today, they are $49 per pack, which is a decent price point in the craziness of the current market.
Even though 2020-21 Hoops has been out for a few weeks, it’s still selling well. People are definitely attracted to the flagship brand and the lower price point in comparison to the basketball products arriving now. They are selling just north of $20 per pack in store.
We had our first case of 2020-21 Donruss Basketball Hobby make its way to us midweek. The case sold for north of $10,000 within minutes of us putting it online. It was barely in our possession. We still have to smile and shake our heads from time to time even though this is becoming more and more normal in the hobby today. Luckily, we were able to restock late in the week and get a few more boxes in the store for our brick and mortar customers.
As far as the gridiron is concerned, even with the season wrapped up weeks ago, 2020 Limited Football arrived this week with the price tag of over $400 per box. It’s a product that offers two autos and one memorabilia card, including one on card autograph, per box. We had a regular customer in the day after it’s release, in awe of that price point. We chuckled about the good old days and what you could buy boxes and packs for at this time last year.
With the relatively nice weather in the area this week, people started to get baseball on the brain. As far as diamond cardboard goes, 2021 Topps products are still selling well for us across the board. We are moving a ton of blasters and have only one or two boxes of hobby left at the moment. Our supply of jumbo boxes was exhausted within a few days of release.
Speaking of America’s Pastime, I personally had baseball on my mind as I was out of the shop on Wednesday. I made the two and a half hour trip south to Glen Mills, PA to meet up with Philadelphia Phillies legend Mickey Morandini to talk about his sports card and memorabilia collection. This was the second show produced in my soon-to-be released Super Collectors series. I’m traveling the country to interview professional athletes about their involvement in this great hobby of sports cards and memorabilia collecting.
In speaking with Mickey on previous occasions, I had knowledge of his impressive collection of baseball sets and absolutely incredible hoard of single signed baseballs that number over 500, a collection of former teammates’ game used bats that numbers near 100 and various other incredibly cool memorabilia from various sports.
My cameraman/producer/technical wizard Chad Evans made the trip with me. I make mention of that because Chad grew up absolutely idolizing Mickey. They say you never want to meet your idols but in this case that’s not true as Mickey was incredibly gracious with his time, a wonderful interview subject and just an all-around great person to be around. I’m sure this is just the first of many in person hang outs with Morandini.
The show is currently being pitched to a number of outlets and platforms. So, if a few factors turn in our favor, you will start seeing the show very soon!
It was back to reality Thursday. I walked in the door and the shop was in full swing and firing on all cylinders to round out the week. There were plenty of orders waiting for me bright and early. Ship, ship, ship all day long. Ship, ship, ship while I sing this song…or something like that.
Friday brought the weekend closer and with that an uptick with in store sales and traffic, as it usually does.
We wasted no time early Saturday morning as we sold a box of 2020 Panini Football Plates and Patches to our first customer in the door. He generally buys single packs or lower end singles and decided to take a chance on a pricier box. He didn’t open it in front of me, so I’m not sure what he hit. I wished him luck as he walked out and went on his way.
I’m most definitely seeing a theme here on Saturdays. The weekend has really become a day for higher end football sales in the shop. As the day wound down, we sold a number of 2020 Prizm Mega boxes, our last 2020 Mosaic No Huddle and even a few 2018 Optic Mega boxes. Now we will attempt to restock some of those products that we sold out of. Wish us luck with that.
With that being said, Saturday also brought a number of people asking to see our lower end single cards. We have a number of 5,000 count boxes filled with lower end singles behind the counter. They are organized by sport, by team and by player. From what I saw, many of the customers were picking through and snagging a number of current and former Philly athletes in all sports.
This week we saw near constant foot(ball) traffic and, literally, constant sales online. We continue to be busy and stay blessed.
Thanks so much for checking in again. I’ll be sure to have more for you next week.
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