CARDBOARD POLICE

Jabs Family, a channel built on box openings and live breaks, spent its Oct. 13 upload somewhere else: "I WENT TO TOM BRADY'S CARD VAULT IN NEW YORK CITY!" The thumbnail shows a CardVault storefront on a city street, with a "CardVault by Tom Brady" banner hanging over a crowd in ball caps.

The visit lands almost exactly a year after CardVault brought its stores to Manhattan, and that year is the story behind the video. When the New York store opened, it was CardVault's seventh. Three weeks before this video went up, the company announced its nineteenth.

The Store That Opened in October 2025

CardVault announced its first New York City store on Oct. 3, 2025, at 244 Lafayette Street in SoHo, opening to the public on Oct. 8. The release described a showroom of singles, sealed boxes, packs and collectibles from Topps, Panini, Upper Deck, Pokémon and Fanatics Authentic, a vault of autographed and game-used memorabilia, a collector's lounge for opening packs, murals of New York athletes and a line of merchandise sold only at that location. As an authorized dealer for PSA, Beckett and SGC, the store also offered on-site grading submissions.

Co-founder Ed Kane called it "our seventh CardVault by Tom Brady store."

Seven to Nineteen

CardVault's own announcements since then trace how fast that number moved:

  • Oct. 8, 2025: SoHo opens as store No. 7.
  • Aug. 13, 2026: the company says it is at 17 locations, in the announcement of a new investor group that included Jay-Z, Aaron Judge and Dana White (CASE #0247).
  • Sept. 16, 2026: Westfield Century City in Los Angeles opens as the 18th location and the third in California.
  • Sept. 27, 2026: downtown Indianapolis opens as the 19th, on a Colts game day, within walking distance of Lucas Oil Stadium and Gainbridge Fieldhouse.

That is twelve stores in under a year. The chain's stated ambitions are larger still. In August it described a long-term goal of more than 100 locations, and co-founder Chris Costa had previously outlined a nearer-term goal of 40 stores by 2028 (CASE #0247).

The template has barely changed along the way. The Los Angeles and Indianapolis releases repeat the SoHo pitch almost line for line: the same five brands on the shelves, the same vault of signed helmets and jerseys, the same PSA, Beckett and SGC submission counter. What changes is the location. SoHo was pitched as a cultural shopping district; Century City sits in a mall next to Din Tai Fung; Indianapolis sits between two stadiums.

Analysis: CardVault is building a chain, not a collection of one-off shops. The first CardVault this blog covered was the Austin store in May (CASE #0009). Three months later it announced celebrity investors whose capital, it said, goes toward more stores, and the stores it has opened since look like copies of each other. That consistency is what makes a store visit worth watching even for collectors who will never stand on Lafayette Street. What a family sees in one CardVault is close to what they would see in the next.

Why a Store Visit Stands Out on This Channel

Most of Jabs Family's uploads in the nine days before this one were openings and breaks: 2026 Allen & Ginter in several formats, Topps x KAWS, Pulse Big League Chew, Walgreens retail boxes and four livestreamed break nights. This blog last featured the channel in June for a 2026 Donruss box break (CASE #0043). The CardVault trip is the only store visit among its 15 most recent uploads.

Analysis: A box opening shows what came out of the product. A store visit shows the retail side: what sits on the shelves, what sits behind glass, and who is in the room. That retail side is the part of the hobby CardVault's expansion is betting on.

Verdict: CardVault's New York store was the chain's seventh. A year later there are nineteen, built on one template. Watch Jabs Family's visit for a look inside the format the company is copying across the country.

Watch directly on YouTube

Channel: Jabs Family