Even I’ve been questioning my own arbitrary goal of making $5K in profit in my first year collecting sports cards. After all, if this really was an easy money making vehicle, why wouldn’t EVERYONE be doing it, right? The other thing weighing on my mind is whether or not this is really something I would enjoy doing. There may be a huge difference between collecting what you want for personal enjoyment vs flipping the best value cards. In order to make $5K in profit on the year I may need to invest in sports and players I give zero personal fucks about just so I can make a few bucks on a flip. Will that be fun?
There’s a big part of me that thinks my wife might be right. Maybe I’m not “smart” enough (or rather don’t know enough about the industry) to even break even, much less MAKE money trading cards. Last night as I went to bed I had an overwhelming feeling that making $5K in profit was far to steep of a first year goal. I mean, how many cards would I need to invest in and how many times would I need to “get lucky” in order to realize that arbitrary goal? Then this morning I decided to start doing the math.
On paper it doesn’t look nearly as bad when you divide $5,000 by 12 months. Suddenly that daunting $5K goal becomes $416 in value a month. Ok…ok…that doesn’t seem THAT bad after all. I mean I’m already $36 or whatever bucks to the good in December and won’t officially start counting until the end of January (remember, I said I was getting a bit of a head start starting in December). Then again, I’m only $36 to the good because I hit on the one card of super value in the pack my first day out. I’m not going to have that luck over and over.
My real strategy however is to try and take advantage of emotional buyers and sell cards when optimism is highest and buy cards when people are angry or stupid enough to dump their cards because their player had a bad game or whatever. Oh save me the crap about “taking advantage of people”. Buying low and selling high is exactly how people make money on the stock market too. It’s no different. Anyone who’s ever had a 401K plan for retirement is hoping that investors on their behalf take advantage of someone whom they bought low from and sold high to someone else in order to realize your retirement goals.
Along that note, trading cards have OUTPERFORMED the stock market for the past 12 years according to many expert analysis such as the PWCC 500 which is the largest trading card market in the world.
The real challenge for MY strategy is that emotional buying and selling will mostly happen during the regular season and, due to covid, this years NHL season (the sport I prefer to collect), is shortened to only 56 games (typically there are 82 games in a season). Normally the hockey season begins in October and ends in April. This year, due to covid, the season begins in Mid January and end in July. In all ways, this years season is going to be different (and shorter). That means I’m almost certainly going to need to invest in another sport in order to make profits all 12 months of the year.
There is one other factor playing into my strategy this year, that is what months I’m more likely to make money and which ones I’m more likely to lose money. This years hockey season ends in July and the season after that should start in October or November of 2021. That means my time to sell for value is Now till July and my time to buy cheaper cards during the off season is from July to October/November. Then I might be able to realize more value from October to December.
Anyway, you are probably bored to tears with all this so I’ll wrap up. Bottom line it that the goal seems POSSIBLE but not likely without a little luck and minimizing first time collector mistakes.