I sold two cards on eBay for about $650 profit today and GameStop called telling me that my cards were ready for pickup. Now I’ll take all of that one piece money and reinvest it into more one piece. I’ll sell the dragon ball z cards and do the same. Lorcana was speculative for me but that card is going for around $250 right now so I’ll reinvest all of that with Lorcana. And the flipping continues!

I buy non official cards from time to time. People buy them at shows believe it or not. I’ve profited off of art cards. I make it known that they are art cards and not gradable to the people buying them. But they don’t care, they like the art. It’s not about money for collectors, it’s about the emotion they get when they see the art. It’s a lot like the art community. People love certain pieces and will pay millions for it. Then people will turn that art into an investment and put it in a museum. Just because it’s unofficial doesn’t mean it isn’t profitable. There are some amazing art cards that you will never see again because they are that rare. And like most non official memorabilia it eventually sky rockets in price. True collectors don’t care about official or non official. They care about the art and will pay the money for what it does for them. Personally, I don’t collect slabbed cards. Unless they are a long term investment strategy which is really all they are. People don’t collect slabs because they like looking at slabs. They do it because they enjoy watching their money bull and bear. I prefer putting the cards I collect into a binder so that I can look at them from time to time. Eventually I will more than likely sell them because I won’t allow attachments like that to take hold of me. Don’t be afraid to buy non official cards because you like the art. They are more rare than the cards that are official. Rarity creates desire. Desire creates the price.

I was talking to a friend last night and what he said was absolutely true “Zack you gotta track your buys.” And he is 100% correct. I am getting better at it. The question is, “am I in profit?” Because in order to know you will have to track what you bought for, when you bought it, what it sold for and when you sold it. That will tell you the market on it. I actually have the spreadsheet for it, it’s blank but I have it and that’s my step to getting better at tracking. It’s not much but for me it’s something. What you should know about me is that I do a lot of auctions where the cards are between 10%-50%. Mostly lots so that I have inventory at shows. Because what sells the most at shows are single cards that people like. So I definitely don’t have a profit margin problem, I’m in profit and I know it. Eventually I’m going to want to know where my money is coming from. Which IP is making me the most money and that is where tracking is going to play a major roll. Right now, everything is chaotic because I have consistent money coming in and consistent money going out. This machine I’ve created is working and so I’m working it. I’ve bought 103 cards in the past week and spent around $2,000-$2,500. But I’ve also made more than that just off of cards sold. So I can safely say that this card flipping loop that I am building is actually working for me. I got this card for $2 because I was the only one bidding. I can turn around and sell it for $21.95-$159.99. Or I can grade it and get substantially more for it. And it doesn’t even have to be a 10. So you see, I don’t have to write down what I’m doing due to profit margins, but I do need to start so that I can see what is making me the most money. “How do you get so lucky?!” Because I watch dragonball z. If you watch the shows, movies, and play the games then you get lucky a lot. Though it isn’t luck, you just know what you are looking at. Watching anime can make you money.

Based on how the show went and what people continued to ask me for this is what I bought. I’ve also been buying Pokemon cards but I support the local businesses when doing that. Those deals are better than what I can get on eBay. Union arena is making some waves. I saw a Pokemon vendor with a Gojo Jujutsu Kaisen tattoo and he didn’t collect the cards. So I gave him a Gojo card because he needs to start. For those of you that don’t know, Bandai created union arena and it is a card game from all these different anime’s. It is seriously undervalued right now. They have taken multiple IP’s that aren’t as popular as they should be and combined them all together to build a card game. It’s genius. I’m also heavy on these new kayou cards as you can see. It’s speculative as you know but the potential is there and I had a ton of people ask for naruto cards. I’ve also invested in some dragonball z cards because that was also brought up a lot. This is just week 1 of buying. I’ve got 3 more weeks to go before the show. I’ve bought over 65 cards. So if I keep going at this rate I’ll have 250-300 more cards and slabs. Oh, some over you are probably wondering about paying full price on eBay and then reselling. The answer is that I don’t pay full price. I look for cards that have sold for more and are being sold for less. On the slabs I always lowball. And more often than not I get the slab. Plus about 8 of these will go into the grading binder to be sent of for grading. Since these cards are higher quality I’ll send them to Beckett. Not just because PSA is going to stop grading low value for 4 months. But because the potential for a black label is statistically higher with Bandai compared to Pokemon. Plus dragonball z collectors prefer Beckett. And a black label would get sold easily.

So I woke up this morning to these two cards sold. I bought these at the previous show with trade for things that I had maybe $300 into and some cash on top. I profited quite nicely on this deal. So I essentially turned $400 into $900 give or take depending on eBay fees. So I decided to make an offer on two serialized naruto cards at $500 and they accepted that offer. I got asked 3 or 4 times at the show if I had any serialized naruto cards. My answer was always, “if I did I probably wouldn’t sell them.” Just because I love naruto cards and they are the only cards I really collect personally. If these two naruto cards are super clean I’ll send them off to Beckett. I’ve seen quite a few serialized cards get Beckett black labels. If they both get black labels which is unlikely but possible then they could sell for quite a premium I’m guessing. There are no sales so it’s a sellers market and people love Naruto. But there is a piece of me that is unlikely to sell them. Now look, naruto is an asymmetrical play in an unproven market. I don’t Recommend doing plays like this but because naruto is a massive IP I feel comfortable personally. When doing plays like this you should limit yourself to maybe 5%-10% of what you are looking to invest. Buy the stuff that sells easiest such as Pokemon. I have a lot invested in Pokemon so I’m fine taking Pokemon money and running a speculative play. Plus I have more cards to sell that I know will sell. I’ll just continue reinvesting.