Nothing to do with my subject, just wanted to acknowledge the passing of a legend.
I’ve taken care of the logistics. My want lists are done and in my phone. I’ve jammed everything I can think of into my carry-on, from snacks for the show floor to empty holders for the multitude of great finds I am bringing home with me. I am ready, pumped, and thrilled to be on the way to the National!
I’m hitting the ground running in Chicago. I travel all day Tuesday. I arrive in the evening and after dinner I have my first wholesale buying meeting. I’ve been working this lead for a few years, old-time, old-school collector who finally wants to sell out of his boxing cards and I’m getting first look; one benefit of writing a research book on a hobby backwater like boxing cards is name recognition. That, and the amazing women I can pull with my hobby cred, of course. If the cards are there and the price is right, I may have to find a bank to get more cash for the show itself.
Travel is interesting because people are idiots. Not all of them, certainly not you, just the ones I seem to run across. I took an Uber to the airport because I was not about to ask the Missus to drive me at 6:00 in the morning. She is NOT a morning person at all. More of a silence until spoken to after caffeine ingestion type. Interesting ride. The driver started playing and singing along with Christian devotional music as we left on the ride. It reminded me of a flight I took once on Aerocalifornia, an unscheduled Mexican airline to Manzanillo that flew really old Boeing planes. I watched the flight attendants strap themselves in and repeatedly and fervently cross themselves before takeoff. Not exactly reassuring for a passenger. I’m putting my life in your hands on this rickety-ass plane and you’re passing the buck to the Big Fella? Same with the Uber driver. He then tells me about his history as an alcoholic and the near-fatal accident he had while driving drunk in the Philippines.
Now I’m praying too.
I arrive to LAX and in one piece so I get to sit and have breakfast and people watch. One disheveled fatass got off a red-eye flight at the gate next to the restaurant, pulled out a stick of deodorant and tucked up his shirt, and lacquered his hairy pits right there in the terminal. Dude, couldn’t you at least walk the 100 feet to the bathroom? Why don’t gorgeous women ever do that in front of me? I guess I should be happy he didn’t un-stank his pits over my eggs.
Lots of sports team gear on the flight today; I’d say easily half the passengers in first class are heading to the show. I sat in my usual 2nd row seat and watched a guy across the aisle in the front row listing cards on eBay for nearly the entire flight. Looked to be all shiny shit. I’m sitting in a cluster of mid-level finance bros traveling on business. The bro next to me is working on a presentation deck and is twitchy as a mens room in a 1970s disco; his left foot is going so much you’d think he’s drumming for Metallica.
But I digress…
I wanted to quickly elaborate on something I now realize that I did not really get into sufficiently in my column on breaking down a flip deal: establishing an order of sale for the items. My strategy (and I think it is a winner for part-timers who want to build a sustainable business) is worst to best. Let’s use the 10,000-postcard lot as our example again. 9,000 of them were modern chrome topographical cards: the cards Aunt Ellie buys at the gift shop when she visits the world’s biggest ball of belly button lint in Boredom, Arkansas. Basically, they are the junk wax of postcards, the crap that people paw through at postcard shows, five for a buck. I want to get rid of those first and fast, preferably getting all of my money out with it.
The remainder break down into two types of cards: good cards with solid retail prospects and (if I am lucky) investment grade cards. Retail cards simply have to be listed into my eBay store or, where necessary to avoid leaving a lot of money on the table, sent in for grading. Whatever I list that doesn’t sell gets blown out toward the end of the year to clear space and generate cash flow. My experience is a 20:20:60 outcome: about 20% of the cards I post will move within a few weeks, another 20% will sell steadily for a few months, and the last 60% will have to be put on deep discount. Again, I turn out the lesser material first.
Among the retail cards are the ‘tweeners”: the cards that are not investments but that stand out from the others for centering, clarity, registration, etc., and don’t merit deep discounting. I am a shitty grading service predictor, so I am not about to try and score 9’s or 10’s myself to sell to the registry folks, but these culls from the herd are so nice that I do not see any reason to discount them, because other people will buy them at full freight and submit them. I would be fine with an inventory of carefully curated higher-end cards and high-grade commons. Quality pays in the end.
The investment grade cards are the ones with real potential to increase in multiples. I may list an investment grade card at a “card museum” price, or I may hold it a few months, or a year, or for many years, unless and until I need the money. Unfortunately, I don’t always get my timing right. The times I have missed a trend and sold early, I have been sick when I saw how much they went for a year or two later. One card I bought and quickly flipped at a 5x markup probably flipped because it was catching fire and ended up worth 10x what I sold it for in a year. I left thousands on the table by thinking short-term. Learn from my pain. If you get a tough card and it is surging, maybe hang on for a year or two and see what happens.
More tomorrow. For those coming in, travel safe. If you happen to be at the VIP party and want to say hello, I’ll be wearing a Plymouth Barracuda t-shirt and probably in line for Bill Madlock’s autograph.
You make me laugh. Good luck at the National