2023-24 Topps Chrome Basketball Hobby Box

I found the shop a couple months ago and was really a fan and treated great on my first couple visits, everyone was extremely friendly, helpful and excited to talk cards, each of these trips resulted in my friend and I spending over $1000 on different boxes of cards. Well the last visit was a different case. We were excited to join the Wemby hunt on the Topps chrome and went on release day to get a box. Let me start this by saying I understand the market dictates pricing on cards. Well the retail price of Topps Chrome was $299 for a hobby box, I understood it was release day and price would probably be higher. I’m by no means rich and when boxes exceed $500 I consider those boxes “expensive or kinda pricey”. I noticed the sticker price on the chrome was $600, the exact comment I made to my friend who was buying the cards with me that day was “$600, wooo, those a little pricey”. Apparently that made the one older gentlemen upset as he demanded a box from behind the counter, scanned the upc and started showing me comps on eBay saying “seems fair to me!!”, it just seemed way too aggressive and angry. I replied “yeah man I know the market, doesn’t mean it’s not still pricey” from that point on that particular gentleman shuffled away and didn’t speak to us the rest of the visit. The rest of the crew were friendly and helpful, and we did end up spending well over $1000 again, even bought the box of chrome, but I really was rubbed wrong by being shown eBay comps on a product on release day so aggressively. It seemed like I struck a nerve and he became way to defensive of his pricing. Again i understand new product hype and pricing could be reflected and there is a premium price on premium product but to double the cost on release day and be so angry about it just didn’t sit right with me. Judging by the shop and its appearance it will still be highly successful and sell an extraordinary amount of product but I will be searching the area for other stores to spend my grand every month.