Sole Free with Harland Freeman, your home for sneakers and culture. That is so fire.
Hey, what's good? It's Harland for Sole Free and we are here in Albertson, New York today. It's Topps Rip Night. If you're a baseball card fanatic, you know what's going on. We are here at Long Island Sports Cards. We got a lot of special guests coming up. I'm going to rip some packs. We're going to have a good time. Let's go.
On three, everybody say Rip Night. 3, 2, 1. All right, like we said before, we're at Long Island Sports Card, home of the hits, Albertson, New York. And we are here with the proprietor. Is that... are you a proprietor?
Collector, owner, and fan. And player president.
And player president, Jonathan Chasin. Jonathan, this is incredible. How are you feeling today?
We love the hobby. We love a celebration of Topps and trading cards. The place is absolutely packed already. It's buzzing. This is what it's all about. You know, you got a lot of kids here, a lot of our good customers around. So, we're excited to get some special people coming and visit us today.
All right, Jonathan. I remember like when I was a kid collecting baseball cards. Like you were lucky to go to a flea market and see some guy with a folding table and like some weird scary van. And now you've created this atmosphere. This is like Disney for card collectors. What went into the thought process here?
So, lucky for us, the store actually next to us became available. We wanted to create an environment where people can hang out. And they can feel comfortable and it'd be vibey. And so, we created clubhouse just for that. There's pretty much nothing for sale in there. You know, I have obviously have some memorabilia on the wall, but we just want people to watch the games, congregate, meet other people, like-minded folks. So, it's all about just hanging out and vibing. And that's what we are about Long Island Sports Cards.
I love it. It's so much fun. And I got to ask you as a collector. All right, we all had something growing up. What was your first chase card? What was the card you had to get out of a pack?
1966 Mickey Mantle. My first Mickey Mantle card. I have a picture of the day that I bought it outside a little card shop in Levittown, New York. Yeah, that was the card. And obviously, you know, being a kid of the '80s, it had to be the '84 Donruss Mattingly. I had to pull that out of a pack. I spent a lot of money pulling packs. And then the '89 Upper Deck Griffey was just another chase card from my childhood that brings back good memories.
Oh my god. Well, that's it. We are here Long Island Sports Card, Albertson. Jonathan Chasin, the owner who's really built such an incredible atmosphere, safe, fun, inviting for kids and parents. Hang out and you rip packs all the time.
Yeah, I'm a little bit of a junkie. You've got me hooked. It's Sole Free.
Growing up, what was the shoe you had to have?
The shoe I had to have growing up was... My mom always had me in like a good little Jordan arsenal, like 6, 7 pairs of Jordans. So, it was those.
We love really innovating products. The thing about the hobby that's interesting, it used to only be about the rookies. So, they only cared about you when you were a rookie, okay? Now it's about how do we celebrate achievement? So, if you think about, you know, who won MVP in baseball last year? And you've got the gold logo man now for Ohtani and Judge because they won MVP. Aaron Judge, last time I saw him, he's like, 'Rubin, everybody wants my jersey with the gold logo man because the jersey's different.' In the beginning, people like, 'Oh, I don't want to stand out.' Now they're like, 'This is awesome. It's the coolest jersey.' And so, we're taking those gold logo men, so we're putting them in the cards. And the same thing in the NBA, the same thing in the NFL. So, I think it's really all about innovating the products. And then getting, you know, to me I think the biggest change has been when we took Topps over 4 years ago, only 10 baseball players collected cards. Now there's more than 250 baseball players that collect cards. And they're like avid collectors. So, like if you collect cards, if the people that we really respect and follow collect cards, that drives the whole hobby.
