So I decided to auction 12 cheaper slabs that had been sitting on my eBay account for over a month. I did this strategically though. I auctioned it off so that the money would arrive in my account before the show so that I would have an additional $500+ of investing cash. These shows are good for selling but they are awesome for buying and that is where a lot of your money can come from if you know what to buy and what will sell. Last show I made a killing on what I bought and sold at the table. How to do auctions strategically: start them on Sunday at 9:00 pm and run them for 7 days and have them end at 9:00 pm. The majority of people are better rested on Sundays and are usually just looking at their phone before bed. Why not give them a shot of dopamine before the week begins?! The bids will likely come in through out the week. But the bids don’t ramp up until the last 10 minutes. Personally I don’t bid until the last 10 seconds of an auction. I won’t bid more than what the card is worth though. I don’t have an ego about out bidding someone, this mindset saves me from making bad business decisions. How to know what you should auction: if you have had a card for sale on eBay and it has a lot of followers and people have sent offers but you’ve declined. Or maybe there has been no offer but the followers are there. I will send an offer to all of the followers first and if it still doesn’t move after that then I will start the auction. Some money out of the card is better than inventory that doesn’t move. But his is where knowing what you have in the card matters. If you are going to stay in profit you need to start the auction at the price point plus shipping for what you paid. So if you have $150 into the card you need to start the auction at $165 so that you can cover overhead. I’m talking like I l’m doing construction 😂 but the same principles apply in this business that exist in my other business. They scale in similar ways for sure.

When I got into the Pokémon card hobby, my plan was to dip a toe in. I started picking up singles off Whatnot, figuring I’d flip a one-dollar card into a two-dollar sale. Turns out, once you add $0.78 shipping and 9.75% tax, that math loses money every time. But I ran some shows, got a few wins, and kept studying. I watched other sellers to figure out who was winning and why. Several things stood out. You need inventory. Empty back walls get no viewers. Period. Cheap cards don’t move people. The strugglers were all running the same 20-cent cards, trying to squeak out a dollar. Even their best stuff topped out around $5. Nothing that makes you stop scrolling. But the real gap was connection. The people who win in this hobby do what others won’t. They know their stuff and respect the space and they build community. I’ve seen streamers with a hundred people in the room still answering questions, remembering names, sharing stories, locked in the whole time. And that community feeds itself. Lone guns don’t last. The ones who build together go further. That’s the bar. Be willing to buy. Be willing to trade. Spend big when the moment calls for it. Push past comfortable and take the shot when there’s a real one to take. So I put my money where my mouth is. I’d spent weeks hunting for someone offloading cards in bulk. Found a guy on Whatnot listing at 80% of market. Came into his channel, grabbed three lots at around 78%, then saw there was more to be had. I asked him to hop off stream. Turned out he was getting out of the hobby entirely. This was the riskiest buy I’d ever made. Before this, I’d never spent more than $20 on a card, and barely that. But we’d built rapport in his chat, and I used it to talk a 113-card lot down to 67% of market. The lot came fast. But I had that itch, more meat on the bone. So I reached back out. He had another 80 or so ARs and IRs. I leaned on the relationship and offered 60% for all of it. He said yes. Two big buys. My two biggest rolls of the dice, and my real shot at this. If I hadn’t taken a risk that still makes me cringe at the cost, I’d be fooling myself. I’d peter out, because I wouldn’t have the motion I have now.

Don’t sell. The longer they listen, the sweeter the pitch. I do contracts with clients for construction. They have already bought me before I come and look at the job. I don’t have to sell, but those are warm leads and when there are 5 and 6 figures on the line people buy with emotion. It’s highly emotional for someone to give you their life savings and ask you to turn it Into a house. And when you start getting into 7 figure conversations it’s only emotion. I’ve been offered million dollar contracts and turned them down because of a gut feeling about the person offering it. If my gut feeling says no to the person, I’m going to say no. Million dollar contracts usually put you next to those people for a year or two in construction. Or I charge triple the price and hope they say no. Some have said yes, which sucks lol but hey, the money is good. When it comes to cards and selling to cold-ish leads it’s still all emotion. The guys that I do shows with will tell you, I’m the loudest person there with the most energy. I’ll yell at people from across the room and get them over to our table. Found out a few years ago I have free will and I just do what I want now! 😂 Once you get them to the table you have to build immediate trust. How do you do that? Ask them what they are interested in. Ask them questions about them because the one thing people love to talk about is themselves and have a reflection of their personality reflected back to them by another person. We are hilariously self obsessed creatures! Use it to your advantage. Typically at these shows they will be wearing shirts with art for anime, or bracelets, watches, some will have binders or graded card boxes. I always ask what’s inside and can I look at it. No matter what it is I always find a way to connect to people based on what they collect. This is where watching anime makes me money. You must have that knowledge to really connect with people and get them to trust that you know what you are talking about. It’s that easy to build trust. I’m not saying they need to trust you like they trust their partner in life, but for that moment you can’t lie and hope to close a sale. As soon as they get a bad feeling which their gut will say, it’s over. I’ve seen it and I’ve done it because my gut, heart, and head run my businesses.

I no longer need to drive to GameStop… I can buy cards on eBay, pay for PSA grading while buying the card, that card gets authenticated and shipped to psa to be graded and mailed back to me graded… Saves me time and money. (Plus I can’t use GameStop right now because PSA won’t allow submissions from them currently.) This saves me time and PSA charges me the appropriate amount up front for the card that I’m sending in. flipping cards just got so much easier. Plus I’ve been looking at sending cards to Beckett as an alternative. The chance at getting a Beckett black label is low but for the higher end cards it’s statistically more probable. From what I can tell this service is only offered on $300+ cards. So you’ll need some liquidity to keep this up. But it will start paying for itself as long as you do your due diligence and research every card. That means look at psa population and eBay sales. Be sure to comp your cards in the middle just because one sale was at $2,000 and the rest were at $1,000-$1,500 doesn’t mean you are going to get one that sells at $2,000. Sometimes it’s market manipulation and some times it legit but you still need to comp cards in the middle range. Now all you have to do is watch anime and make money on your phone.

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!