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I purchased just two items that weren’t sports and non-sports cards over this past week, and both were sports related: a Pittsburgh Panthers logo football signed by former quarterback Kedon Slovis for $7.50 and a hardcover book signed by retired F1 driver Jackie Stewart for 7 and change. Both should net a decent $15 or so profit as long as I don’t foul up the shipping charges.
But that’s not much of a post, so let’s get into the card business. I make my money on buys like this relic card of the late, great, troubled baseball hit king Pete Rose which cost me $8.50 and will net $30 without much trouble. A few years ago, thousands of these cards filled my eBay store — I was just constantly hunting for these deals and buying, sorting, scanning, listing, selling, shipping, repeat, repeat, repeat. Then I discovered the beauty of selling on consignment. Now, most everything I buy goes into boxes to ship to my consignment port and I have gotten more selective and strategic about what I buy.
Sometimes you have to spend a little more to make a little more. This Paul Skenes Wild Card 1/1 cost me $30 and should sell fast in the $100 range. I might actually list this card in my eBay store because I think it will sell very quickly. Skenes is the hot new pitcher for the Pittsburgh Pirates and completed the best rookie pitching season in at least 20 years. Wild Card is an unlicensed brand, which you can tell from the lack of logos on the uniform, but it’s a well done set which uses foil well and that keeps its values somewhat high. More relevant — Skenes is so good that flippers are hot to buy and sell his cards, and everyone who’s into modern cards loves low serial numbers, especially 1/1s. This was a Saturday night auction win. The big consignors I buy from have auctions ending every night of the week. Most of them skip Fridays and Saturdays. My favorites are the ones who don’t.
The card boom of the last five years has led to a growing market for some niches that were previously ignored — women’s basketball, tennis, college sports. Add golf to that list, and this Ian Poulter Panini Instant LIV versicolor parallel limited to 5 cost me $3 and should net an easy $10 profit. I don’t know much at all about golf beyond a few big names, but I buy and sell a few hundred sub $5 cards a week, giving me plenty of room to speculate when it feels right.
I’ve gotten somewhat heavy into non-sports cards this year, which have become about 15% of my overall business compared to 1-2% in the past. Those numbers are guesses, but they sound right to me. I have a particular fondness for sketch cards, and while this 2019 Rusty Ink sketch card doesn’t have the features of a $100+ sketch — it’s black and white, it’s not attached to a big brand like Star Wars or Marvel, it’s not a name artist — the card only cost me $6 and change and it’s Santa Claus! Something tells me that if I’m very good, this sketch card will sell in the $20 range over the next month or two…
A popular type of modern non sport card are relic cards with little pieces of something in them. I’ll do well with this John Adams 2023 Pieces of the Past card simply because of the document’s age. Less valuable relics contain scraps of books about the subject, which to me feels like low effort on the manufacturer’s part. But not every card can be a winner. Even this one, which has pretty nice eye appeal, sold for just $3 and change at auction. I’ll be happy with a $10 profit. Eventually, I hope it lands in someone’s personal collection where it will be appreciated for years.
So that’s the modern card market in a nutshell, driven by large consignors with a constant flow of breaks and auctions and new sets where there is a chase for the big hit cards of name players with special features. Most cards — even relics, even autographs, even cards with a serial numbers — sell for $10 or less, and a card’s worth can ebb and flow based on a million factors within the secondary market. But there is a pretty clear logic to it, and every week I learn a little bit more. It’s a fun way to make a buck.
What did you find this week?
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Oh, and can’t believe I forgot what is probably my most interesting buy of the week: this set of 1937 Amalgamated Press postcards for just under $4 including combined shipping on a larger order. I generally send stuff like this to consignment and let them figure out what it is, then I figure out pricing. But lately I have been analyzing my consignment expenses, and oversized items trigger a fairly significant increase in fees (anywhere from $1 to $3 extra), so I’m going to keep these with me.
There’s another reason for that. In the first picture of the listing, the postcard on the left has some writing on it. I’m pretty sure it’s a signature. I had a hunch — and a little Terapeak research confirmed — that it’s the signature of legendary cricketer Don Bradman. It will cost me in the $50 range to get the auto authenticated, and there’s a chance the signature won’t pass authentication. But if it does, I think this signed postcard will sell in the $300 range, same as the signed photo in the link. Find out in Sale of the week thread six months from now!
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@Craig-Rex – Why do think that certain sellers avoid ending auctions on Friday or Saturday? Are those not considered good days for the end of an auction? I always thought that weekends (at least Saturday) was better to get a higher price.
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@Sharyn Most of the sellers I buy from are consignment companies, so I think the explanation is as simple as their offices are closed weekends.
I think that weekends can occasionally be very slow on eBay. I’ve noticed this in my own store. On the infrequent occasions I have zero sales in a day, or something like 1 sale for $17, it’s almost always a weekend or a holiday when I assume people have other things to do besides browse eBay.
The sellers I buy from have the most auctions ending on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday and basically less and less as the week goes on. I find the best deals on Fridays and Saturdays but there’s also an element of luck to it. Not everything that ends on a Saturday goes for a steal price.
However, when I sell a really expensive $250 and up item, it’s usually on a Thursday or Friday, or over the weekend. I also send out more aggressive offers, like 25 to 30 percent, closer to payday and over the weekend. After a batch of end and sell similar is a good time to send offers, too.
I think there are a lot of factors that go into what gets people browsing on eBay or what turns browsers into buyers. But in general, I can say with some confidence that if you run auctions, stick to Sunday, Monday, Tuesday evenings since that’s when the sellers who do almost all auctions have most of theirs end.
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I went out yard to yard sales this week and there were surprisingly more than a few. I quit after 3 though as I bought a lot at the third. At the first the coolest item was 4 sealed posters from original Star Wars movies. I haven’t researched them yet.
The third sale was a big church sale where multiple folks set up in the parking lot. There was a guy who runs a paddle board class business in the area selling. He had a TON of cool surfer/skate clothing and shoes. I explained what I do and he was cool with it. I bought two huge bags worth of stuff for $200 and he’ll likely reach out to me to sell other stuff as well, wet suits and stuff like that.
the “non” scavenge of the week was an HD DVD player. For years I’ve wanted to find an HD DVD player. I’m just fascinated by obsolete AV technology. I’ve found HD DVD’s but didn’t buy them because they are worthless. So today I FINALLY found that player. It wasn’t really worth much so I just took a moment and practiced “catch & release”. LOL!
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hit a few estate sales this weekend. this was more for my wife and I to get out and about and look around peoples houses 🙂
We went through a 60’s or possibly 70’s house that I doubt has been upgraded since built. They had red carpet in the kitchen!
Anyways…I’m still working through a collection of about 60 model airplanes I bought of FB Marketplace so I’m really trying to not buy more stuff….but I did find a large TravelPro garment bag suitcase new with the tags for $22.50! Everything looked good, still had the plastic bag but did seem to be an older model. Got it home and realized the dang wheels were dry rotted. So looking like I can replace those for about $20 and hopefully sell this things for about $200. as they’re around $500 new!
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I used to buy cricket books for a friend. One book was about Bradman’s career as a stockbroker in Adelaide. Deeply boring.
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I’ve never met a stockbroker who wasn’t deeply boring…same goes for anyone who’s ever tried to talk at me about crypto. You know who I mean, Mike!
I received the lot on Saturday and the Don Bradman photo is in fact signed, with a few notes on the back of his postcard and one or two others about test matches and batsmen and other crickety things. I’m fairly stunned at the sold price you linked and now I have to toss the whole lot onto eBay as is. It would take me 6-8 weeks to get the signature authenticated even if I was heavily motivated to take care of all the paperwork and fees today, which of course I’m not. So we’ll see how this lot does on its own. $4!
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@craig-rex The cricketer whose cap has the Prince of Wales feathers on its crest would have been a Surrey County Cricket Club member, i.e. an English cricketer. Looks like Harold Larwood, but I haven’t seen anything to connect him to that club. He’s famous for using Bodyline against Bradman, to the disgust of the Aussies.
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https://www.ebay.com/itm/235813846265
I bought this antique bowl for $6 at the flea market from a guy who had closed a brink and mortar and was over it let me tell you. The rest of his stuff I wasn’t really interested in unfortunately.
Should have got this listed earlier. Paid $4 https://www.ebay.com/itm/235809871165 indy flea. Remember to vote if you haven’t already! 🙂
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