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This is prime time for my card business right now since the consignment company I use runs a million promotions from November through January. So sellers on the site, myself included, are constantly buying and selling. I sold over 3000 cards last November alone, as much as I sold over the first four months of the year combined! I would love to come close to that number again, but I’ll be happy with 2500 cards sold this month because my inventory is slightly higher quality this year and I’ve figured how to buy cards which sell more quickly. Instead of holding for six months or even a year or two, a lot of cards I try to sell within a month. So I’ve been selling about 1,000 cards in “regular” months as opposed to 400-600. It means I pass up a lot of deals for slow moving inventory and sometimes work with lower margins if it’s something I think can sell fast.
One of the biggest promotions is send any item in your inventory to eBay auction for $0.99 with no minimum fees, normally $2 with $3.50 minimum to discourage those low dollar cards. So when auction slots open up, I’ve been sending as many decent cards to auction as I can. In normal times, the company’s eBay page has around 400 auctions ending every night. During this promotion, it’s more like 2500/night. Some cards and memorabilia items actually do well at auction, and others do ok, but most auctions are a good deal for the buyer. I’ve been bargain hunting these listings to restock my inventory for cheap. You can link your eBay account with the consignment site and set up autopay so the cards transfer digitally a few seconds after the auction end. All I have to do is price out the new inventory and wait for it to sell. It’s a great system. My favorite find this week from the $0.99 auctions was a Butch Cassidy relic and gemstone card from the silly 2023 Super Products Keepsake card set. If there’s one thing I truly love about modern cards, it’s that manufacturers will put anything in a card if there’s a market for it.
Continuing on that theme, another Super Products beauty — a John Greenleaf (Whitter, I assume) handwriting card for $7. How could I pass this one up? Maybe his quill scratch is from a nice ode, or sonnet? Pretty much all the cards I buy go into boxes which will get shipped to consignment. I used to send in a box every few weeks, now my inventory’s big enough that it’s more like once a month. A lot of cards I hold off on submitting for a few months, until there’s a promotion special or I can drop off at a local show. Once the company has my cards, it’s a few weeks to add to my account at the $1 processing level and a few months at the $0.50 level. It’s very different from when I had 2,000 plus eBay listings (almost all cards and library sale finds) and it was just a constant pipeline.
The consignment company charges a couple bucks extra for oversized cards and autographs, so I’ve been doing the work to list most of those on eBay myself. Add this big card with a beetle inside it to the pile — $12 COGS. The Upper Deck Goodwin Champions set has had Entomology inserts with bugs in them a few times in the last decade and cards from the set have a solid sales history in the $50 and up range. 12 year old craigrex who loved those kits where he could dig around for vole fossils is thrilled.
A couple quick ones: I’ve never sold a mug before, so this signed Dwight Gooden ceramic stein has the potential to be the first. $8 COGS with combined shipping. I’ve sold a handful of authenticated signed baseballs lately, so I added this Herb Simpson (Negro Leagues) signed ball to the pile for $5 — no solds, but this feels like something that will sell for around $20 to $25. Same with this 1956 Portland Beavers minor league baseball scrapbook for $8 — this consignment seller has trickled out a large collection of Beavers memorabilia, 2 or 3 auctions a week consistently over the last few months. I’ve listed a few things and have a bin full of stuff that I’ve been organizing. Add one more to it. I should do a big flat rate box of 1950s and 1960s Beavers memorabilia soon.
What did you find this week?
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Not alot of scavenging for me right now. I did stop by an estate sale at a real nice house on the way home from an event. Their prices on hard goods were laughable – $200 for a lamp that had a $14.99 TJ Max sticker still on the bottom. LOL!
I did buy two items though – a Christian Dior Women’s blouse and an old instamatic camera still in the original box. Both items worth about $40 each and I paid $2 each.
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I picked up a stirrup pump at the junk market, thinking it’ll make a lot with my Air-Raid-Precaution wood saw, only to find that the pump’s missing the brass strainer at the end that dips into the bucket of water. This is a WW2 civil defence type thing; German incendiary bomb drops on your doorstep, you fetch your bucket and pump and spray the burning device liberally whilst singing “Hitler’s only got one ball”.
It’s that kind of week.
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I haven’t been thrifting much but not missing much it seems when I stop by. I think there is a post-election slump in processed donations. The Christmas throw up seems to be pretty much out at our two biggest and they are way overpricing some items at that local chain. I believe the flea market is also not happening this week. From my piles, it’s pretty much RA and bread and butter Christmas getting listed – nothing too exciting.
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