Form TL-9 · Founder’s file · one per company

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About TopLoader — built at the counter of Box Buster Sports Cards

TopLoader was built while actively working the buy desk at Box Buster Sports Cards. It wasn’t a side project based on imagined workflows — it was the tool we needed that afternoon, for the customer standing at the counter.

01The counter before TopLoader

A real shop, with daily buy desk traffic. Customers walking in with binders, boxes, and whole collections — all needing a fair offer, fast. The workflow was a spreadsheet on one screen, market lookups on another, sticky notes on the counter, and mystery math in somebody’s head. Slow, and inconsistent.

The bigger problem wasn’t speed. It was accuracy. One deal priced at the wrong rate — one item that should have flagged a warning but didn’t — could cost more than weeks of software fees. And there was no record of what happened after the customer left, so when something went wrong, nobody could trace it.

02The first version

TopLoader started as a fix for those specific problems, at that specific shop. Open a deal, price it against the shop’s configured rates, surface a warning when something looks off, finalize with a receipt and a record. Nothing more.

Every feature since exists because someone at Box Buster actually needed it — not because it looked good on a comparison chart.

“I’m Gage. I work at Box Buster Sports Cards and built TopLoader while actively running the buy desk. I’m not a founder who interviewed shop owners and built what they described — I had the problem, built the tool, and run it daily.”

— Gage, builder & buy-desk operator

03Shaped by daily use

We don’t ship features until they’ve run at Box Buster. That’s not a marketing claim — it’s literally how development works. A feature gets designed, gets used on the floor, and only goes out to other shops after we’re confident it works under real conditions.

Shops using TopLoader don’t have to adapt their workflow to the software. The software was adapted to their workflow first.

“The bugs we fix are ones we hit ourselves — usually mid-deal, with a customer waiting at the counter. There’s no better quality control than that.”

— same counter

04Where it's going

The buy desk — deals, inventory, reports — is live and in daily use. Vendor Mode (your show booth, run from a phone) and SlabTrack (grading submissions tracked from intake to cert number) are in development, built the same way: on the floor first, then out the door.

The goal is plain: operating infrastructure for card shops. The paperwork a shop runs on — deals, inventory, shows, submissions — computerized, without asking the shop to change how it works. Requests come from working shops and get tested behind a real counter before they ship. That’s what keeps the software honest.

End of file

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