Scavenge of the week September 17-23, 2023

I spent a lot of time enjoying my life this week, so not a ton of scavenging even though the opportunities were there. I hit one library sale that had been a nice success a year ago and wow, what a difference a year makes because there was nothing good at all even though I went on the (thankfully free) preview day. More likely the good stuff was all things I didn’t have a lot of knowledge about. I spent all of three dollars and questioned my life’s decisions the whole time. $3!!!!

But the trip wasn’t a complete bust. This particular sale was about a 45 minute drive from me, but it was only about 20 minutes from the best record store on the East Coast, so I detoured there after and brought a box of CDs with me to trade in. I added one CD box set from the library sale to my trade in box and after an hour of them tallying, I received $44.50 in cash. $42 after paying for parking. $28 after buying some cupcakes. Was it worth in terms of $$/hour? Absolutely not. But how often do non-scavengers get cupcakes and gas money for a few hours of “work”? I’m counting the whole trip as a victory, as well as a reminder to go to the record store with trade-ins much more often.

Back in the real world where cupcakes don’t pay my bills, I had some nice success last week with scavenging online, even though I didn’t spend a ton of time on it. The time and energy I spend hunting for auction steals and deals is the piece of my eBay business that I have analyzed the most over the years. I was probably spending 20-30 hours almost every single week during the pandemic looking through online auction listings. It was tedious and expensive and repetitive. But the card market was booming. That helped me deal with those “strange times” we all lived through and built my business to where it is today, where I am lucky enough to do this full time and I have more financial flexibility (by far) than I’ve ever had in my life and I am starting to learn about and sell other stuff. But I’ve found that I’m a lot happier when I only spend about 10-15 hours a week looking through online auctions, which still leaves me with plenty of opportunities to find great deals.

Like this 100 card serial numbered set of rookie cards, all cards of Philadelphia Phillies third baseman Alec Bohm and modeled after different Topps sets over the years. This set was only given out at the exclusive (and expensive) Topps Transcendent party, and a lot of party attendees (mostly card dealers and flippers/collectors for whom money is no object) make up the cost of their $2000+ ticket by selling off some or all of the swag from the party. But not every listing sells for top dollar. In this instance, I paid just $51 (!!!) for the 100 card Bohm set. I will send the entire set to consignment which means my cost for each card will be around $1.50. I’ll list most of the cards at $10 to $20 with a few more desirable designs priced higher. I have bought two sets like this in the past (Derek Jeter, and then a set which was split between contemporary stars Ronald Acuna Jr. of the Braves and Juan Soto now of the Padres) and did very well with them, so I was thrilled to win this auction. The seller had a few other sets listed, and I was outbid on them, but getting such a good deal on this one takes a lot of the sting away.

Then on Saturday night, I was checking another seller who I like and saw the strangest coincidence, another set of Transcendent VIP cards, these featuring Toronto Blue Jays star Vladimir Guerrero Jr. These sets rarely pop up, since they’re so limited, and when they do they’re almost always sold via BIN/BO. So what a weird thing to find multiple auctions in such a short time period. But that is the world of eBay card sales, where it is so easy to sell your own cards or send them to a consignor who does all the work for you. I bid a little higher on the Guerrero cards than I did on the Bohm set, maybe a little bit of FOMO influencing me. But I came away as the winning bidder at $81, so my cost for each card in the 50 card set will be around $2.50. That’s still $200 net profit if I sell each for $5, and I will be listing them at $10 (or higher) to start.

Writing all this out has helped me realize that I should have bid higher than $200 on this Sandy Koufax 100 card set which ended the same night and time as the Bohm set. I knew its value at the time, but didn’t want to blow past my budget, since there is always a next time with scavenging. But that was a bargain price for the winning bidder, too. What a week of steals and deals, successes and failures. They should all be this interesting.

What did you find this week?