Geeked Out — Local services in San Antonio

Stumbled upon this shop while visiting home & was instantly taken away to childhood, like "Alien Worlds" on steroids (no comics, which is fine). I'm not a TCG player anymore but do enjoy collecting & window shopping, & this place has an excellent variety of all the popular TCG's, plenty of tables set up for gaming, and a video game room in progress which looks to host tournaments. Very impressive for this mall of the past.

The reason for my low rating is the experience I had regarding a pair of used "YGO/Adidas Dark Magician" shoes, shown by a very friendly employee & given a price of $215. Over the matter of about 10 minutes I experienced the workers raise the price to $225 on me, then decline THAT price in cash because "owner is upset, we looked it up and it was priced wrong (important*), as soon as you leave he's raising it to $350".

Ensued one of the most awkward negotiation experiences of my life.

I waited several minutes as one of the workers asked for permission from a higher up to sell the item at an already higher price than agreed upon ($225), until I told the original employee good luck getting $350 & to keep them.

Not sure really what to say about this other than an immense amount of things simply went wrong here. I'd advise being aware of bait & switch tactics or miscommunication with this business. Lower level customer service was excellent, but I don't know what they're doing at the top.

I left and went to eBay where I got a brand new pair (in my size) before leaving the parking lot with sealed Promo card, for $180 shipped. Thus my money went to a small business in Florida (literal shoe "flippers" with a retail front, btw), instead of cash "supporting local business".

Perhaps it was just miscommunication, definitely short-sighted greed, but it's important to beware how this place handles matters like this. & they failed, pretty bad. The item was originally priced appropriately, just missing the "card shop tax" of ~2X apparently. The place is cool, but this type of business practice would be hard to trust for return business in my opinion.

PROS: Appeared to be a weekly schedule of TCG tournaments. Staff was very eager to reach out, yet not pushy. Very good selection of sealed products, loose base cards, toploaded valuable cards, and even a small display case of high end.

CONS: It's a pretty fairly sized place for this type of market, which is great for tournaments & selection, but it does mean overhead on the business even in this mall. Overhead = margins have to be raised. Just how it is. I saw the recent "Pokemon Paldea Evolved" booster box a little over $130-140 + tax which go for about $85 online at time of writing, for reference. That's standard stuff in many card shops. But whatever happened with that shoe & promo card deal is hard to call standard though. It was very souring, unfortunately....

Pros: Transparent, nice people working there, good customer service in terms of dealing with you right away, cool store set up and decent selection of singles, decent prices on modern cards. Cons: They will gauge TF out of you on vintage card prices and try to weasle you for every buck of trying to trade. Drove 3 hrs here in hopes they would have high end vintage stuff I could trade up which they didn’t, and the couple they did were Severely overpriced, like PSA 9 prices for raw questionable 8s. Since I drove so far, decided to get some less desirable cards for cheaper. When pricing the cards, I noticed they would say MP cards were LP and “NM-“ we’re LP, and then they used inflated prices for the league above their worth. To top it all off, when trading MUCH more desireable slabs that would be MUCH easier to sell, they came at me with trade value insultingly low when even a 1-1 trade would have been beneficial to them. Overall, cool store some cool art seem like nice people should check out if local but do not waste time coming here if you plan to buy singles

Edit: I appreciate the owner coming in and as I said youre customer service was good. I believe you misunderstood my critique. I didn’t mean trade up in terms of value, I see those videos a lot and don’t like them. I wouldn’t expect to come into YOUR store and trade up value wise. I meant trading up as in multiple cards for one card that’s worth more, in which case the 65-70% TV would make sense. I’m saying when I realized you didn’t have any really, I picked apart cards with much less value then the ones I was willing to trade as I didn’t want the trip to be fruitless for my collection. You and I both know the cards you wanted ti trade for would be MUCH easier to sell than the ones I picked out. This is when, as a business owner, you should have worked with a customer more in terms of TV. I wouldn’t expect one to one value trade (even though at a card show it def would have been) but even 85-90% would have been more than fair based on the cards. Also, you were going off what you THINK the card condition was as a man was looking at them, giving me a condition, and THEN using TcG to price. However, when I looked at most of them I thought you were being quite generous with your condition scale. I’m not going to knock you and say it is a scam or anything, I understand you’re a business, and I think you have something cool, just don’t lose sight of why you started it in the first place for the money and leave the people that make it possible...

A Hidden Gem for Collectors – Friendly, Welcoming, and Well-Stocked

I’ve been coming to Geeked Out, now located at 1419 Commercial Ave in San Antonio, for the past six months, and it’s easily become one of my favorite places to stop by. It’s a smaller-sized store, which makes it feel comfortable and inviting, never overwhelming, just easy to browse and hang out in.

The owners and staff are incredible. They’re always so kind, fair, and genuinely looking out for the buyer. As someone who’s newer to collecting, that’s meant a lot. They’ve answered my questions, helped me make decisions, and never made me feel out of place.

The store has an awesome selection of sealed product, tons of packs, retro and modern consoles, and a great mix of video games. I’ve learned a lot just by talking with them.

If you’re into cards or games, whether you're new or experienced, Geeked Out is 100% worth checking out. I've been so many card shops in SATX since starting my collection and this one is by far my favorite.

Adding a few photos I took, just a small glimpse of why I keep...