During law school my best friend, Scott Graziano, and I had a business where we bought and sold baseball cards. It was a really enjoyable business for two guys that grew up collecting baseball cards. We sold almost all of our cards on eBay. This was in the very early days of eBay (1997). In fact, we were one of the first 100 eBay "Powersellers" (a designation given to large sellers on eBay). I even got an eBay t-shirt for becoming a Powerseller. We did a good little business during law school. It was a crazy time. Working during the day, going to law school at night and trying to run a business. The truth be told, Misty did most of the real work (packing, tracking, etc.) and Scott and I spent money and went on trips.
We called the company Esquire Sports. Get it - esquire - for two guys in law school. We thought we were very clever. Anyway, when the baseball card market started to take a turn for the worse we came up with this idea for card frames. This was during a time when companies (e.g., PSA, GSI and Beckett) were "grading" cards and putting them in hard plastic slabs. It worked like this, you would send a card in to one of these companies, the grading company would carefully look at the card, and give it a numerical grade from 10 to 1 (with a 10 being perfect) based on the condition of the card (i.e., centering, edges, coloring, corners, etc.). This was huge for the baseball card market because it (1) provided some standardization of quality, and (2) provided a reliable evaluation system facilitating the purchase and sale of cards over the Internet. The result was that literally millions of cards were being graded. The problem was, after they were graded the cards were still being stored in boxes. This was crazy. After the cards were graded people wanted to display the cards. However, no product was available to display graded cards.
Scott and I had a few cards framed at Michael's, but the cost was prohibitive (i.e., over $90 for a custom frame). That is when the idea of custom frames for graded cards was born. I am not sure who came up with the idea (likely Scott) but we both knew the market was ready. We found a manufacturer and produced hundreds of frames, mats and foam inserts to hold and display graded cards. We got an 800 number, designed a great website at www.esquiresports.com (today this is a sports gambling site) and we were up and running with Esquire Sports displays.
We debuted the frames at the National Sports Collectors Convention in Chicago. It was a great time. We did not sell a ton of frames but they were certainly well received.
Upon coming back from the show, we did a little marketing. Scott visited the NBA flagship store in downtown New York and their main buyer was interested. After jumping through some hoops (pun intended), the NBA Store purchased several frames. They sold out after a few weeks. We also got word that the Tennessee Titans were interested in purchasing frames for their corporate suites. We felt like we had arrived. :)
This is a picture of one of our 3-card frames.
This is a picture of one of our 2-card frames.
We designed a very professional great looking brochure.
The May 2004 issue of Beckett Dealer Direct - the largest sports cards dealer magazine of its time - ran a story about Esquire Sports Displays.
The story was titled "Esquire Sports Brings Graded Cards Out of the Box." We took out a full page ad next to the story. It was a nice layout. One interesting Helms Family note about this ad is that the frames featured in the advertisement contain two picture cards of Brittany and Shawn Jr in their baseball uniforms.
Here is a picture of me standing in front of our very sweet pop-up display at a large baseball card show.
Here is our setup comparing the Michaels prices to Esquire Sports prices. Killing the competition!
We even had some custom clothing featuring the Esquire Sports logo. I think Scott still has some of these unopened.
An Esquire Sports hat. I think I still have this somewhere.
So what happened with Esquire Sports? Well, the truth is, after all that preparation and startup work we simply did not execute on the idea. "Real life" got in the way of a very good concept. Scott and I both had day jobs and we simply never followed through on the idea. We purchased thousands of dollars in material that has been packed away for about 9 years. This past weekend I shipped our (significant) remaining inventory and the Esquire Sports pop-up stand (that has been stored in my attic) to Scott in California. He is going try to sell some frames over the next few years. Kind of funny. See below a picture of the 500+ lbs shipment of frames headed to California.
