The owner of our shop escaped a bitterly cold stretch here in Central Pennsylvania recently as he made his way back down to the Outer Banks for another week at the beach full of wheeling and dealing beachfront properties. In recent trips down south, he’s expanded to buying more properties and, most recently, buying what will be a future home of another Sports Zone Toys & Comics location in the OBX. What initially started as a long-term plan seems to rapidly becoming more of a short-term goal as he plans to move south and open a location in the Carolinas sooner rather than later.
That leaves a few unanswered questions, but as far as I can see, I will be running the shop here when that moving day comes.
Part of our bitterly cold week included my car not starting Thursday morning, so I was without wheels for a few days. Everything got straightened out, and I was back on the road by the weekend.
New Releases/Puzzling Returns
2022 Zenith Football made its way to the shop this week. They have been a slow seller in the store with us only selling a few boxes here and there and the online sales aren’t much better. With our price tag right around $275 per box and a product that only offers six total cards, that can be a tough sell, even though you can find two autographs including one patch auto.
Of course, the NFL and specifically the Super Bowl is getting a ton of attention right now, as it very well should, but the NBA season is in full swing, too and we are just on the cusp of the All Star break. We’ve been selling our 2022-23 NBA Hoops blasters really well in store and on the interwebs. We sold out all of our blasters within a few days time. We do have some retail boxes left on the shelf but they won’t likely be around much longer.
There was one package that was dropped off by our trusty mailman Kevin this week that had me scratching my head. Upon opening it, I saw that it was a return from the eBay authentication team, stating that the description was significantly different than the item received and the authenticators could not authenticate the 2022 Select Draft Picks Brock Purdy autograph that we had sold online earlier in the week. It was clear to us that the listing title matched the description and the description matched the card itself, so I’m not sure exactly what’s going on. I literally watched one of our customers pull this from a pack in our shop.
After Purdy got hurt and the 49ers were knocked out of the playoffs, eBay sellers saw numerous returns of recently purchased cards, but this is something a bit different in that the authenticators are the ones who rejected it based on what was in the listing. We will have to look into this a little more closely.
Super Bowl Sellers
With the Super Bowl approaching, we’ve been selling a ton of Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles products across the board. We’ve really seen an even greater uptick in our Imports Dragon figures of Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce.
Not so much with the only Eagles player in the series– Davonta Smith.
However, we’ve been selling a wide array of Eagles mini helmets from the current Speed model to the 1969-73, the 1974 version and everything in between.
We’ve seen a lot of electricity in one of our home state teams making it to the big game. If they win, Monday should be a very busy day.
We had another great football related moment with my son on Wednesday as he committed to Clarion University on college football’s National Signing Day, putting his name on the papers that will make him a college football player in a few months. There was a really nice assembly highlighting some of the great Altoona Area High School students that will continue their academic and athletic careers in college. We happily attended the event as incredibly proud parents.
Thanks to Felix and Tracy back at the shop for covering for a few hours in the morning that day, which is certainly one we won’t forget.
We, as a big football shop and big football fans, are really looking forward to Super Bowl 57. The electricity in the shop is high and the conversations are great.
