What's Hot, Merging Edition

Bluto: “What? Over? Did you say ‘over’? Nothing is over until we decide it is!”

Usually I use this space to share What’s Hot in my card shop or shops overall. This time I’d like to share a slightly different report and also apologize for not contributing as much as I should have recently. I’ve been a bit distracted and I hope this sheds some light as to why that was.

Mike’s Stadium Sportscards will soon be partnering with Dallas Wax, Triple Cards and Beast Sports Cards in Plano, TX to continue to offer Colorado’s best collectors a (slightly) new version of Colorado’s best card shop. My crew and I will remain here as we grow, offering collectors greater inventory, an improved shopping experience and all of the fun that we have been serving up daily since we opened way back on December 11, 1992.

The decision to merge has been on my brain for a few years and when Laurence from Dallas Wax posted that he was looking for card shops in different states, I wanted to do my due diligence. What attracted me was that even though I run my shop differently than how he runs his; we would continue going online with our collectors three nights a week, that the shop (aside from some cosmetics) would remain the same, that we share a pricing system and that my employees would be taken care of for as long as they wanted.

The shop will now get a new point of sale system, an improved design and will be more secure than ever before. I’ll be able to restock more effectively than I could previously and I look forward to adding more product lines to what we already offer.

The best part is I get to follow my dream of continuing to still work at the card shop and attend industry events.

I’m excited to see what the next multitude of years offers. The next year looks like it should be a monster with so many QBs poised to be taken at the top of the top of the draft, Victor Wembanyama hopefully reminding us of what Shaqmania was all about and Connor Bedard trying to do his best Connor McDavid imitation. Now to hope that we find another Julio Rodriguez in 2023 so all four sports can be firing on all cylinders.

When I opened Mike’s Stadium Sportscards over 30 years ago, I did so because I was managing the previous location and it was time for the owner to move on. I figured between that Shaq guy coming into the league and appearing in all 1992-93 late season products and the Rockies starting the next year, I could do no wrong.

Well, the Avalanche joined the party in Colorado, eventually bringing us three championships, Elway and Manning provided three championships of their own, the Rockies got swept in the World Series and the Nuggets are looking pretty solid this year. I can’t complain too much about help from the home teams in terms of community and collector interest in cards.

People often ask me what I collect and more than anything else, I collect friends. Sure I have my childhood collection and some quirky cards that spoke to me over the years, but my kids have hundreds of honorary uncles and aunts thanks to the shop.

We have provided meals for those who could not afford them, given scholarships to kids who were nice, have filled so many vehicles with holiday presents, stuffed backpacks with all a student could need for a school year and so much else. THAT is what I’ll remember about my time as an owner and I am looking forward to continuing to support the local community with the same and so much more.

I started with a movie quote, so I hope it is ok for me to finish with one from Scent Of A Woman to represent my feelings.

Lt Col Slade: “No, I’m just gettin’ warmed up.”