So what exactly IS any particular sports card worth? When I first started collecting I thought the simple answer was whatever the trading card database I was using (tcdb.com) said the card’s value was. I soon learned that this logic had MAJOR flaws and realized a more accurate measure is what the cards are selling for TODAY on Ebay. In other words, what are people ACTUALLY paying for this card when they buy it today? But even that has major flaws as some days a card will sell for four or five times higher than another day even when they are only one or two days apart. What makes the same exact card with .15 cents one day and $5.00 the next? Well, the answer is this. A cards value is only what someone else is willing to pay for it RIGHT NOW. And trust me, that answer doesn’t tell you SHIT. So, when I tell you what my collection “value” is today according to TCDB.com I understand that this number may be total shit. In fact, I’m almost certain it’s total shit but still it’s a starting point and something to discuss and break down in this month’s recap and lessons learned of my first month collecting.
My Strategy Going In
Before I ever had a clue what to expect collecting cards, I had the silly notion that I could actually pay for my hobby by selling off whatever cards I don’t want or have duplicates of. In fact, I heard that some people make good money “flipping” cards (buying low and selling high in quick transactions) so I thought hell, maybe I won’t just break even but I’ll actually make a little money too. I then set a totally arbitrary goal of trying to make $5,000 in total card value in one year (meaning my collection would be worth $5K more than I paid for them). According to TCDB.com I’m well on course to hit this goal but again…this may be total bullshit and in fact probably is. Let me explain.
First, I knew that this goal would require me to buy cards at a low price and sell them at a higher price in order to make any money so I quickly started following Facebook Marketplace for local collectors selling off their entire sports collection for next to nothing. My hope was to find someone lazy or clueless about what their collection was worth and get a “steal” in value. My thought was, if I can buy cards at pennies on the dollar and sell them for even .50 cents a piece, I can make significant money just doing micro sales of cheap bulk cards. And for the most part that strategy SEEMS to be working, but only time will tell.
Also, because I was eager to start buying NEW cards and I knew my chances were better losing money this way, I spent a SHIT TON (for me) of money I shouldn’t have my first month buying brand new 2020-21 Upper Deck Series One Hockey cards and then buying even more bulk cheap cards everywhere I could in hopes of offsetting what was sure to be losses on buying brand new cards at full price.
Turns out I got SUPER lucky on buying new cards and pulled not one but TWO high demand cards selling on Ebay every day for around $250 each. Of course some days that same card sells for $85 and some days for $300 so I have to figure out how to sell on the right day and right way to realize that $250 median selling price, but that’s a story for another article.
My “Investment” for January
So let’s break down my embarrassing “investment” this month (which actually started a little early in late December around the 20th). I use the word “investment” loosely because I anticipate loosing most of it but am hopeful that my investment will return actual money down the road. Here are the key purchases in January:
- 2020-21 Upper Deck Series One cards at retail price – $312.24 (after taxes)
- Ballard Collection (bulk Facebook offer) – $15
- Mill Creek Collection (bulk Facebook offer) – $50
- Marysville Collection (bulk Facebook offer) – $100
Now, there are other purchases or expenses not listed here like shipping costs on some trades I made online, etc but above are the big purchases. All told, including a purchase of two cards for my own personal collection (not to be sold/flipped), I spent a whopping $776.69 on cards. That was WAY more than I intended to spend but I was trying to figure out how this works and experimenting a little and, fortunately for me, I had a little extra spending money laying around. Also, I’m selling off my Magic the Gathering cards to offset my start up costs in a new hobby.
My TCDB.com estimated “Value”
So, as it stands as of the moment I wrote this, my total collection value (as reported by tcdb.com) is estimated at approximately $1768.39. So, if you take what I’ve “invested” on this hobby since December 20th ($776.69 and subtract it from my estimated value of $1,768.39) you will find that I have a net profit/value of nearly $1,000 (actually $991.70). That’s not too bad.
In order to make my arbitrary goal of $5K in value for the year I need to gain about $416 a month in value so I’m WAY ahead and can slow down now. The question is, is this value realistic?
Here is how that breaks down a little
As you can see, I have $587.39 value in cards for my personal collection. Theses are cards I currently intend to keep for myself and not flip/sell any time soon. I also have an additional $1,181.00 in estimated value in cards I’ve designated as for sale/trade.
Among those cards are my new 2020-21 Upper Deck Series One cards as well as cards from the major bulk purchases off E-bay. Namely I refer to these as the Ballard Collection, the Mill Creek Collection, and the Marysville Collection, based on where I purchased them. There are so many cards in these collections and the collections were all scattered around and had to be sorted and entered into my database that I have only managed to enter and catalog approximately the following percentages of cards from each collection.
- Ballard Collection (33% entered)
- Mill Creek Collection (85% entered)
- Marysville Collection (5% entered)
The great news is, I have LOTS of cards still left to enter and I’m WAY ahead of my value vs investment goal (if the value isn’t total bullshit). Each one of these collections above has a unique story but I think I’ll save that for another article. For now let me explain why the values may be total bullshit.
Lessons Learned
- TCDB.com database prices are often outdated
- TCDB.com database prices are inflated/exaggerated
- Trading one sport for another is difficult
- Selling on Ebay may be a total crap shoot
- Hidden fees may eat up all or most profits
- Not a good investment of time for reward (yet)
First off, TCDB.com database prices are often outdated. The way TCDB.com obtains their value is by selecting the median price entered by users who have actually sold and/or verified seeing a sale on Ebay of said card. While that sounds good at first, I found it has MAJOR flaws. For example, say I bought bulk hockey cards today printed in 1991. I enter what cards I have into the database and it tells me I have over $100 in card value. BUT, if I click on a card’s history to see the sales data I might find that the card hasn’t been verified as sold for over 6 years. In addition, the card may have been hot for a while in the 90’s but then dropped off steeply and today no one wants the card. The median value therefore might still be fairly high based on the days when it was hot (and since no low sales have been recorded to drive the median value down). So I may have lots of cards that once sold well but today might not sell for shit.
Second, TCDB.com sales data are likely artificially inflated. Did you catch it when I said that TCDB.com values are determined by user entered data? In other words, the database is not automatically recording every sale on E-bay of said card but rather only those cards that users have entered and verified. While these are actual ebay sales and links provided to prove it, there is a big inherent flaw. If I have 10 cards that supposedly are each worth $10 each and put one up on Ebay that sells for fifteen cents instead of $10, I’m certainly not inclined to go report to TCDB.com that the card recently sold for fifteen cents. Why? Because I want other traders to think the card still might be worth $10 that’s why. I might be able to get $10 worth of trades out of someone for that card but if they know its only selling for fifteen cents the gig is up. Therefore the database design likely encourages users only to enter sales data that inflate their cards value rather than deflate it.
Third, trading one sport for another can be difficult. Originally I just wanted to collect hockey cards. While I decided to buy bulk cards that include other sports like baseball and football, my hope was to trade those off to people looking for those in exchange for their unwanted hockey cards. While there are certainly lots of people collecting multiple sports, it seems far easier to trade football for football or baseball for baseball than to try and trade baseball for hockey. Thus it encourages me to start collecting other sports because it’s easier to trade within the same sport.
Fourth, selling on E-bay may be a total crap shoot. I was fortunate enough to hit on a highly sought after Alexis Lafenerie card in the new 2020-21 Upper Deck Series One set and immediately jaw dropped when I saw this card was selling on E-bay daily for around $300. I was tempted to sell mine immediately but thought, “What if the price goes up? I’ll kick myself if this card is worth $1000 a year later.” Besides, I’m interested in collecting the entire set and unless the card value drops drastically after I sell it, it will be really hard for me to get one back for my collection later. And so, I held on to it and low and behold I hit ANOTHER Alexis Lafenerie card in my next box of cards. I was stunned to see that the card was STILL selling every day for hundreds of dollars but the value had come down just a little to around $260 a card on average. However, I also noticed that graded cards from PSA (a card grading company) were selling for $600 to $800 a piece!
I quickly looked into the price to have the cards graded (about $50 a card) and did the math. If I can grade the card for $50 and have the value go up double or triple that’s a no brainer. So I sent not one but BOTH cards off to be graded. And I waited……and waited…..meanwhile I watched the average price of graded cards drop from $800 on the high end to $550 on the low end. Why? Because more and more people were getting their own copy of the card and putting them up for sale too. Obviously it’s all a matter of supply and demand and right now the supply keeps going up and up and up. So, while I wait for my cards to come back graded I’m watching all the people who beat me to the punch put their graded cards up and the average sale price slowly coming down. Sure, I can probably still expect to sell them for hundreds if they come back graded high enough but how much did I lose not selling the card immediately in the early stages when demand was high and supply was low?
Fifth, selling low value cards on Ebay sounds like a way to earn money over time but it’s still unclear to me how much I’ll lose in listing fees, packaging materials, and shipping costs. E-bay takes a percentage of the sale, Paypal (if used for purchase) takes a percentage of the sale, and of course I have to ship the item. So if I don’t price it right I may sell a card for $1 only to find I paid $78 cents in listing fees, handling fees and postage and effectively gave the card away for 22 cents. And hell, if I click the wrong button and pick say a bold subtitle for a $2 fee I could actually LOSE money on the sale of a low dollar item. So it still remains to be seen if micro transactions can be effective on E-bay or not.
Lastly, the amount of time I spend sorting cards from bulk Facebook listings is ridiculous. In my two biggest collections there were cards mixed together of multiple sports, multiple years, upside down and backwards such that I honestly don’t think someone could have mixed them up more if they tried. I spent HOURS sitting at a big table flipping cards over and right side up then into piles of sports (baseball, football, hockey) and then finding like matched cards gathering them together into sets and then sorting each set down numerically for entering into my database, then searching the database trying to find the exact set that matches mine and entering every card by hand. All of that doesn’t even factor in E-bay time sucks such as listing the card, filling out all the add details, scanning a digital image of the card and uploading it, finding the card again if it sells and packaging it, taking it to the post office etc. As you can imagine, for a .25 cent or .50 cent card it hardly seems worth it. The ONLY way this pays off in my mind is to ignore the time investment entirely and chalk that up to my “hobby I do for fun” and then try to find a way to streamline the process a bit such as only listing cards on Saturday and doing all my mailing/packing on Monday’s.
So bottom line is, I’m learning a whole lot about card collecting but I also have tons more to learn. I realize that I’m only scratching the surface of understanding what does and doesn’t work for me and still have no real idea if I’m losing my ass in this hobby, breaking even, or making potential profit.