Building businesses, trying new tools, and making room for people. The original posts, collected in one place.
Imported October 2, 2026. This is a static archive. Posts follow their LinkedIn activity order; publication dates appear only when verified.
Showing 101–120 of 348 posts
The thrill of opening the last pack can be immense, especially when it yields the rare item you've been hoping for. Moments like these, where anticipation meets unexpected reward, highlight the excitement of collecting and the joy of final…
Read the post →Discovering a signed K-pop Demon Hunters card is a thrilling moment for any collector. These rare finds represent some of the top rarities in the hobby. Landing a signed card, especially one from a sought-after series like Demon Hunters, i…
Read the post →Exciting news for the Beyblade community! Izzy's Arena recently sent four officials to the North Star Beyblade Regionals, competing in both limited and ranked formats against 80 players each. It was an incredible experience, representing S…
Read the post →"Adversity causes some men to break; others to break records." William Arthur Ward We opened Izzi's Gym in March of last year. Here's what nobody tells you about building South Dakota's biggest card shop from nothing: the good days are eas…
Read the post →I spent years in the restaurant business. Now I run a card shop. Two industries with almost nothing in common, different customers, different products, different everything. Same exact problem with reviews. I learned early how much one bad…
Read the post →Most people walking the floor at a card show are hunting Pokémon and Magic. We're going to be the booth that stops them in their tracks with something they've never seen. Kayou. Naruto, My Little Pony, Tokidoki — an entire world of collect…
Read the post →I collect autographs. Not athletes. Not movie stars. Builders. People who took something most folks overlooked and turned it into something the whole country knows. Orville Redenbacher put his name on a bag of popcorn. J.C. Penney built a…
Read the post →We've got some HUGE news to share with our amazing community 🎉 Izzi's Gym is officially a Topps Direct Partner and we honestly can't stop smiling about it. For a store that's barely been open a year, earning this status is a massive miles…
Read the post →This is exactly what I keep telling people is coming and nobody's listening. 7-Eleven in Hong Kong figured out something most US retailers haven't even noticed yet. Blind boxes at the register isn't a gimmick. It's a whole new distribution…
Read the post →Stord just raised $250M at a $3B valuation. Worth reading the founder's note. The line that stuck with me: "9 of the 10 largest US companies by revenue operate physical networks at scale. Physical foundations built with the right technolog…
Read the post →My brother and my mom are the real community builders at Izzi's. This week they ran something they invented called the Binder Showcase Contest. The rules are simple: they give you a prompt, and you have to use the cards in your binder to e…
Read the post →25+ kids showed up to Pony Club this week. They colored on our new Pony Coloring Pages. They traded cards with each other. They got their first Pony Passports. They ran a scavenger hunt through the store. This is what most retailers are mi…
Read the post →Spent $300. Was offered $40,000 in sealed Pokemon product. Spent $200. Moved $12,000 of my uncle's agricultural products. The unlock? Pipeboard. It's an MCP that plugs Claude directly into Facebook Ads. Every morning I open Claude, tell it…
Read the post →My dad taught me too well. And it just cost me another $25k. Every release day I climb on this same soapbox, and I'll keep climbing on it: stores should not be allowed to sell Pokémon over MSRP on release day. Pokémon is a precious commodi…
Read the post →He took 2 years off to recover. I didn't. A former business partner stopped by Izzi's Gym today. The guy who was in the trenches with me when we built the old company. The one who bottomed out the same time I did. We didn't just build a bu…
Read the post →My brother is a genius. He had AI scan every single Pokémon card ever printed and describe what it sees. So now: Want every card where a Pokémon is eating something? You can find it. Want every card where a Pokémon is sleeping? You can fin…
Read the post →Discovery is the toy industry superpower. TikTok Shop has become the most powerful toy discovery engine on the planet, and the brands that understood that first are rewriting what success looks like in our industry. Not just the global gia…
Read the post →The scariest thing my mom has ever said to me is, "I'm ready to start another master set." My mom is not a card flipper. She's not on TikTok. She doesn't know what a pull rate is and she doesn't care. She's a woman in her sixties who decid…
Read the post →𝗛𝗼𝘄 𝗮 𝗦𝗺𝗮𝗹𝗹 𝗧𝗼𝘆 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗻𝘆 𝗕𝗲𝗮𝘁 𝗛𝗮𝘀𝗯𝗿𝗼 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗠𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗹 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗣𝗼𝗸é𝗺𝗼𝗻 Two guys walk into a pitch meeting at The Pokémon Company. On the other side of the table sit the biggest toy companies on Earth. Has…
Read the post →Big news from TCGplayer Direct: starting June 18, the Shipping Replacement Cost model is getting replaced with a simpler, more predictable per-card fee structure. I'm genuinely excited to see what this looks like for us. At Izzi's, "predic…
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