I think I can speak for everyone in and around the store to the level of excitement we experienced with the NFL season fully kicking off Sunday afternoon. Week one brought a number of upsets including the Chiefs losing Thursday night, the Bengals nearly laying a goose egg in Cleveland, the Steelers looking like a low level college football team at home and the Cowboys absolutely washing the Giants on Sunday Night Football.
It’s always exciting to get that stock market feel as each week offers new stars and outstanding performances, which sometimes lead to an uptick in demand for cards that we have at the shop. Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa really impressed throwing for nearly 500 yards in the season opener. Number one fantasy stud 49ers running back Christian McCaffrey dominated in Pittsburgh and showed why he is the fantasy king and Dolphins wide receiver Tyreek Hill did what he does best, racing down the field and chucking up the deuces as he leaves defenders in his dust. Young quarterbacks Brock Purdy and Jordan Love impressed in game one and we saw an uptick in both of their cards immediately after their victory.
We always chuckle when we come in Monday morning. We wouldn’t even have to watch football over the weekend to know who had a big game as we see in uptick in card sales. I always joke that we can see what customers are prisoners of the moment because all it takes is a good game for people to be buying dusty and otherwise forgotten cards out of our showcases and five row boxes. It’s part of what makes the week-to-week drama so much fun.
Of course, nothing was more stunning than seeing Aaron Rodgers limp off the field with a torn Achilles tendon Monday night. His season is over and the hopes some had about a continued resurgence in Rodgers cards will likely be crashing with it.
The week consisted of more sports card releases with one of the big ones being the 2023 Immaculate Baseball boxes, which you can see My Brief Box Break right here. Immaculate sold really well for us, as we only have one box left on the shelf at the time of this piece.
We also continue to get various forms of the new 2023 Panini Draft Picks Football product in including hobby and retail in the form of mega and blaster boxes. Although the hobby boxes have sold pretty well for us, we’re sitting heavily on Megas and blasters at the moment.
Early this week wasn’t exactly what I would define as fun times at the store. As we walked into our Monday morning bombardment of orders that followed quickly by a busy Tuesday. We received an insanely large order from Super 7, the company that produces hundreds of the small pop culture, music, and sports collectible figures we sell. The small boxes nearly completely filled up our back room until we were done processing them.
My Friday afternoons are always fun, as I get to bring my daughter to work from 5:00 PM until we close. She usually talks me into buying her a few NFL or MLB Teenymates, some Pittsburgh Pirates cards or other fun stuff to add to her growing collection at home. This week she was in the back room with me and she told me she wanted the “Joe Kingman” figure we had. For those of you that don’t have small children, Duane “The Rock” Johnson plays Joe Kingman, a star professional quarterback but lackluster father in a Disney Movie called The Gameplan, which Isabella loves. I walked over to see what she was talking about and I saw the new WWE figure of The Rock that we received earlier that day. Now I just have to find a Boston Rebels football uniform.
Here’s a reminder to always keep tabs on your pay.
In doing some quick math in regards to my weekly hours worked at the shop, I came to realize that I’ve been shorted than hour each week on my paycheck on the weeks that I work weekends.
Over the course of the past few years, we’ve had certain changes in our business hours those that were open to the public and those that were not, but doing work behind the scenes, and somehow, this hour got lost in transition. Ultimately, it’s my oversight. It wasn’t just for a week or two–this was over the course of, at the very least, a year and a half. We’re talking more than a few extra bucks in (or not in) my pocket.
I brought it to the owner’s attention. Fortunately, we quickly came to a resolution that made sense for both of us, with no one knowing exactly how long it had been going on. I’m grateful for that as some businesses wouldn’t have been quite so willing to work with an employee.
Mid-September is almost here and we’ll be anxious for Week 2 of the NFL and MLB milestone chases that will start to play out ahead of the postseason.
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