WaxPackHero is going brick and mortar!

After several fun and successful years of creating content and buying and selling cards online, I’m excited to share that beginning this fall I will be expanding to have a physical, brick and mortar presence as well.

Relationships Create Opportunities

The owner of my LCS has been a great resource for me since my return to the hobby in 2015.  We’ve built a good working relationship and have collecting and business models that compliment each other well.  We like handling different types of cards, and this allows for us to both benefit as collections walk through his door.

At one point his shop was two different storefronts which resulted in there being a second, smaller, office area in the store.  A few years ago, another one of my friends worked out a deal to have this space dedicated as a “shop within a shop”.  Busted Wax was born my friend Vance ran this shop as a side hustle with limited hours for the last couple years.

Well, Vance was ready to move on and approached me with the opportunity to buy out his 1 million plus card inventory and take over the operation of the “shop within a shop”.  After thinking about it for a few weeks and having several conversations with my wife, I decided to move forward and make the deal!  

What Am I Getting Myself Into?

I’m excited about all the learning and education that will come from this endeavor.

Building relationships, in person customers, and business issues will all be areas where I will continue to grow and learn.  Operating (or shutting down) during this continuing COVID environment will be interesting.  One advantage I do have is that I already have established online platforms to move inventory if we end up not being able to have the physical shop open at some point.

The price I paid was fair, but it was still a significant financial commitment and I did have to break my rule and dip into my “regular” savings for a portion of the purchase price.  Paying myself back is going to be one of the top priorities for the first several months.  

Time is actually the biggest question for me.  For one, it is going to take some time to sort and process a million card inventory.  Only about 200-300K of it is currently “for sale” in the shop.  The remaining inventory is in storage and is mostly unsorted.  I figure it will be a good part of a year’s worth of work and entertainment to sort through it.

Second is the time to physically be at the shop.  This is also a side hustle for me, so at this point, limited hours on the weekends is what we’re going to try to start off with.  I am nervous even that may end up being a challenge.   My family and I will be focused on clear communication on how this one is going. Family and my day job come first.

Getting Started

I plan to spend most of the month of August getting things organized.  There is a good stock of older sealed wax, modern, junk wax era, and vintage singles, and also some memorabilia and other collectibles.  I need to go through and get comfortable with where everything is and see if I want to organize it any differently.  I also need to potentially adjust some of my website and social media content to reflected the additional platform.

Hopefully, I’ll be open for business beginning in September!

I have a feeling, this adventure is going to lead to lots of additional content for the podcast and blog.  There undoubtedly will be lessons learned along that way which I will be happy to share with all of you.

As Vance and I did the final “inventory” count and made the official handoff, I actually ended up making my first sale.

What was it?

I’m glad you asked.  

Two wax boxes of 1990 Score baseball and a sealed wax box of 90210 cards.

It has begun.

Make sure to check out the Podcast called the WaxPackHero Sports Card Minute!  It’s available here directly on the site at the Podcast link at the top of the page, or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play, and TuneIn!  Check it out, let me know what you think, and tell your friends!