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I mostly sell modern sports cards and the category is dominated by a lot of huge sellers who mostly sell on consignment and have tens of thousands of listings. Their templates are usually variants of “see title” and “see description.”
This is a boon to me as someone who buys all his inventory on eBay (usually through auctions which are also huge in this niche), since the title or description on some listings contain errors or are missing information which makes that particular card valuable.
But what these sellers lack in maximizing profit, they make up for in volume. Many have 100,000 listings or more. So I can see the utility in a very bare bones, basically non existent template.
I have a standard template which lists out my shipping costs (including combined shipping if the buyer purchases multiples) and references how I ship and package. Then for each listing, I add in the same details that are in the title plus anything I couldn’t fit because of character limits (for trading cards, usually it is the full set name and which sport it is) and any details on item condition.
I combine shipping for free (buyer only pays the highest shipping charge) which is somewhat common in my niche. I actually think this might be one tip which could be useful for other scavengers regardless of what items you’re selling. I realize shipping can be prohibitive on larger items but I am of the mindset that it is worth losing a buck or two on combined shipping if it means selling multiples.
What I think is always worth avoiding is the classic “new seller on mobile” template, where the description is just a repeat of the title. See this listing (not mine) as an example.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/334062662162?_nordt=1&orig_cvip=true&nordt=true
The seller will still make good money on this listing because eagle-eyed card buyers like myself can spot many of the valuable cards in the pictures, and a lot of card buyers and sellers (myself included) enjoy the “thrill of the hunt” (basically banking that there might be more valuable cards than what’s pictured). But this listing would sell for much higher if there was a list in the description of the most valuable cards.
FYI, once you copy and paste the code for the shipping supplies coupon, it gets added to your cart. You don’t even have to paste it in. Not sure when that change was made but I’m glad it was. It would obviously be easier if eBay went one step further and added the shipping supplies coupon automatically to your cart until you use it, but maybe that’s harder to code or something.
I have been adding more store subcategories since eBay consolidated categories within my main niche (sports cards and memorabilia) but I’m doubtful those subcategories have as much as impact as buyers searching for the items they want in my store. The subcategories make me feel more organized, but it’s not something I would spend much time setting up if I didn’t already have the basic store categories in place.
The most notable and useful change I can think of would be a way to customize pages so that buyers can find similar items in your store without having to click seller’s other items and search or scroll down to the description and search through subcategories (if you use them). Too many steps and too reliant on the buyer to do all the legwork. This one is probably unlikely though.
I really like the potential of the recently implemented coded coupon which can be sent to repeat buyers, and I’m eager to see how the feature gets rolled out further. Ideally, if buyers receive a notification in their messages that they have a 15% coupon from you (similar to a best offer notification), that seems like it would be really useful as far as enticing buyers back to your store.
Chili dogs! Had a pretty good one at the local farmer’s market last week but it would have been real nice to sit down at a coffee shop table and eat it…
6/6/21 – 6/12/21
Total items in store: 2601
Items sold: 70
Gross sales: $2863.53 (up 55.4% from one year ago)
Net sales: $2029.87 (up 60.9% from one year ago)
Highest price sold (net): $295.07 — autograph rookie card of Donovan Mitchell, who is the star player on the Utah Jazz (one of the teams in the NBA playoffs which are happening right now)
Lowest price sold (net): $8.56 — college jersey card of excellent quarterback and not-so-excellent person Michael Vick
Loved the podcast this week. Already looking forward to hearing tales of your July travels! It sounds like your trip will be restorative for both of you. It’s so important to take that time away, after all, scavenging gives us the opportunity to do so when so many others (certainly my whole family) don’t get that same luxury.
My sales numbers over the last 31 days are up almost 20% from last month which is no surprise at all. I’m well aware how many packages are going out every day! I remember thinking last year that there was no way my sales were ever going to be higher than they were at that time. But I was obviously wrong.
Make no mistake, it’s not because sports cards are any ‘hotter’ than they were 3 or 6 or 12 months ago. If anything, the market is starting to cool down somewhat, especially among the flippers who may have gotten introduced to cards during the ‘bubble’ and are starting to recognize that selling them is not as easy as some other things. You need that knowledge base of what’s valuable and what’s not, and that takes trial and error. It certainly has for me.
I have been very disciplined over the last few weeks about spending a good chunk of time on listing almost every day. Some days it has been listing cards or autographed items that I paid $1 to $5 for and would take a $10 or $15 offer without a second thought. Other days it’s more expensive items and most days it’s a mix. That’s really all it has taken to increase my sales. I am fortunate to have listened to this podcast for so long, since that allowed me to recognize over the last year that I could keep buying and growing this inventory and it would pay off down the road. My guess is that payoff is happening somewhat for me now, though a summer slowdown wouldn’t surprise me at all.
I had 2300 listings in my store at the beginning of May and I’m at 2600 tonight even though I sell 40+ items a week. This is the most inventory growth I’ve had over a six week period. I’m not sure I can list at this same level over the next six weeks, but I’ve streamlined a lot of my listing processes and have all that unlisted inventory, So who knows? If it’s a rainy summer or sales slow down a bit, maybe I can hit 2900 or even the big 3000 by the end of July.
A few tips, maybe: I took extra care in the last week to add eBay’s required item specifics to all of my new listings, as well as revising most of my old listings to include them. I’ve also run a few fairly sizable markdown sales (25% to 30%) on hundreds of older inventory items over the last few weeks. I suspect all of these factors helped my sales. This is all anecdotal evidence about one particular niche, so take from it what you will.
The main lesson, as always, is probably the most simple one from the scavenger manifesto: if your items are priced well and interested buyers can find them in search, they will sell. Some will take a day or less and others will take a year or more, so no point in getting hung up on any one sale or non-sale. Just keep listing!
almasty,
I mostly sell modern trading cards and do almost all of my sourcing on eBay, and I am also finding amazing buying opportunities right now. A lot of sales in modern trading cards are through large consigners who have thousands of auctions ending every night. eBay’s recent decision to eliminate individual sport subcategories in favor of the subcategory “trading card singles” has led to even more volatility than usual in auction ending prices. Some of my best deals have been similar low prices to when a seller makes a major listing error (like the complete wrong category, or failing to include details of a valuable card), but without those obvious errors. Sellers who don’t use item specifics, in particular, are almost certainly not getting as many eyeballs on their listings. It’s been particularly surprising to see some of the ending prices on auctions I’ve won considering the overall high prices in desirable sports cards.
eBay is requiring sports card sellers to add item specifics to all listings by July 12th, so I expect things will stabilize somewhat by then. But I will have quite a stockpile of inventory to list built up by then if I keep winning auctions at the same rate I have been the last few weeks. It’s nerve-wracking (despite the fact that I know that my buying strategies work), but as you said always worth taking advantage of.
5/30/21 – 6/5/21
Total items in store: 2515
Items sold: 64
Gross sales: $3139.11 (up 36.6% from one year ago)
Net sales: $2185.97 (up 38.3% from one year ago)
Highest price sold (net): $125.98 — 1/1 silver pack Shohei Ohtani card from the 2019 Topps Transcendent VIP party
Lowest price sold (net): $4.02 — jersey card of former Montreal Canadiens Hall of Famer Larry Robinson
Really enjoyed the podcast and everyone’s posts this week. I’ve been listing a lot over the last few weeks and finally got over 2500 listings, which is basically a high. More importantly, the items I’m listing are in the $50-$100 range and some higher. In the past, growing my inventory always meant listing lower quality items less than $20. But I am fortunate enough to be able to spend a bit more on higher quality inventory now and that is what keeps the pipeline going.
It’s important to acknowledge those little moments, but it’s on to 2600 this week.
5/16/21 – 5/22/21
Total items in store: 2375
Items sold: 47
Gross sales: $2779.59 (up 34.7% from one year ago)
Net sales: $1973.14 (up 33.4% from one year ago)
Highest price sold (net): $144.19 — autographed 8×10 print of former Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Randall Cunningham
Lowest price sold (net): $6.17 — 15 year old autographed card of former Vancouver Canucks (hockey) Daniel Sedin
My highest price item sold this week happens to be an item with an interesting back story because it really illustrates how the trading card market has changed in the last few years. I’ve mentioned before in these posts that I acquire almost all of my inventory from eBay auctions and relist using buy it now or best offer. But another method I have to pick up new inventory is through redemption points with one of the main manufacturers, Panini. Here is what their rewards site looks like.
https://www.paniniamerica.net/rewards.html
These redemption points are originally found in packs and boxes, usually as a substitute for an autograph where the player couldn’t sign their card on time or to make “card math” work in terms of the number of types of cards (autographs, jersey, inserts, etc) in a box. The points cards range in value from 150 all the way up to 15,000 and 25,000 which are obviously much less plentiful. Panini adds new cards to their rewards site on a weekly basis, and if you have the points in your account, you can pick out the card or cards you want and “buy” it. How they determine their values is a mystery to me, and often there are massive discrepancies between “points” value and dollar value.
The resale market for rewards points had always been pretty consistent at around $5 per 100 points. Until, of course, the early stages of covid last year, when the world (and card manufacturing) basically went on pause and prices for rewards points bottomed out. I had always tried to keep a few thousand points in my account, but those expenses really add up! But when the market bottomed out, I started checking saved searches daily and bought tens of thousands of points, as many as I could afford. And I’ve been eating off those points ever since, which has been particularly useful as the prices for points has risen significantly.
Anyway, to the item I sold. A regular autographed photo of Cunningham, who was a star quarterback in the 90s, would probably cost $20, but this was an 8×10 print with a background in Panini’s color blast design. Color blast cards are only inserted in a few specific sets and they are very highly sought after, with prices that would probably surprise you.
I don’t understand the mindset that would compel someone to spend hundreds of dollars on any collectible, but I can see the aesthetic appeal of this set. It’s a nice design. And so the color blast autograph prints have a moderate following, too. Especially because they were only released on the Rewards site one time and never again. I purchased a few others with the Cunningham and had sold all of them, often for my full asking price. I had not seen another Cunningham listed besides mine in the last two years. Predictably, the listing had a lot of watchers and lowball offers over the last two years, but I couldn’t pass up the offer I received this past week and the buyer basically got a one of a kind item.
Coincidentally, Panini released a new round of Color Blast autographed prints a few weeks ago. I had been eagerly waiting for them since the first batch were so popular, but things have changed so dramatically in the card world in the last few years. I couldn’t add any to my cart, let alone purchase them. They were sold out within minutes — seconds really — on the rewards site. This is because the trading card world has become infiltrated with the methods that resellers of other limited edition items use — bots, cook groups, the types of things associated with sneakerheads. Those resellers are basically playing a completely different game than scavengers. They buy and sell almost immediately so they can use the funds from that sale to buy the next thing that continues the cycle. Some of them probably get lucky and stumble on something that’s particularly valuable that they can make $5000 on in one day. Maybe that is enough for some of them, maybe that’s all they want.
But I will get over the hurdle of 2500 items this summer– hopefully to 3000 — and it is so rewarding to see the inventory grow and see this level of sales sustain. This was a really satisfying week after a few slower weeks. A lot of nice high dollar sales and a lot of items which sold very quickly. Had three $100+ items go to the same buyer within a day of listing them. There’s no bot you can purchase or Youtube course that will teach that level of knowledge.
Hope your wife is doing well, first and foremost, Lukastreasuretrove. That is always more important than any particular week’s numbers.
I am fascinated by the lot of old letters! If you don’t mind sharing, were these an estate sale find? Are there collectors of old letters, or are the buyers museum curators and local historians and genealogy nuts?
And how much identifying information do you put in your listing? With cards and especially with autographs, every so often I have a buyer who is clearly a family member because the last name is shared, or they send me a message that says this was my uncle’s neighbor or father’s best friend. I love those buyers that are so happy to have this item that they just have to send a message about it. They usually pay full price and leave positive feedback, too.
I imagine this sort of personal connection to the item would be so much stronger with these old letters which are so rich and textured with details. It’s sad, especially what you added about being unable to find any info on them, but it’s beautiful that you were able to move the letters along to their next home, allowing their love story to live on (in a way) a little while longer.
And $90 is nothing to sneeze at! Congrats on a nice sale.
5/9/21 – 5/15/21
Total items in store: 2341
Items sold: 45
Gross sales: $1836.56 (up 16.5% from one year ago)
Net sales: $1205.62 (up 19.8% from one year ago)
Highest price sold (net): $83.32 — authenticated First Day Cover autographed by football Hall of Famers Jim Brown & Paul Hornung
Lowest price sold (net): $6.10 — gold refractor insert of Toronto Blue Jays minor leaguer Alek Manoah
Like everyone else, last week was a slower week for me. I had mostly $20 and $30 sales and in dissecting the numbers, almost every $50+ sale was international shipping or weighed more than a pound or had some quirk that meant my total shipping cost was $10 or more. And I spent a lot on new inventory. There was logic behind the purchases, and I know it will all sell eventually, but sometimes I read about everyone’s $1 box lot auction purchases and can’t help but feel a little jealous.
(Ironically, I won a nice card at auction last night for a dollar and change — maybe two bucks with shipping and tax — that will eventually sell for $100 if not more. The listing wasn’t perfect but wasn’t so bad that the auction should have ended so low. This is very rare for me, usually it’s more like spend $30 on a card and list it for $100 to $150.)
Anyway, these weeks will happen. Best to look for the positives. First is that the slow sales led to playing around with a markdown sale, which is something I think about almost every week. When I do use markdown manager (maybe once a month?), I have a bad habit of discounting the same old inventory 10%. Inevitably, only 1 or 2 things sell and I wonder why I’m wasting my time.
This time, I took a solid hour out of my day and went through and selected 500 older and/or more “stale” listings but with some thought behind the choices. I discounted 20% and really tried to put some thoughts into which listings I discounted. I’m four days into the sale at this point and already have $220 in sales with two buyers who purchased multiple sale items. Maybe there’s a lesson learned here or maybe these sales would have happened regardless, but either way it’s nice to get some inventory sold.
I scavenged something for myself this week — a nice, sturdy 35″ inch standing desk riser. Brand name is Flexispot if anyone is in the market for one. I had done the research on these a few months ago, but of course I’m not going to pay $200 for a standing desk. What scavenger would? So I saved a few ebay searches and waited a few weeks and eventually found an auction with a starting bid of $49. Amazingly I won it for that price. I was somewhat surprised, but having listened to the podcast for so long, it’s furniture so of course there is a lot of variance in price. Lots of people don’t have the room to store it and if you’re moving, furniture is one of the first things where if you don’t have the space or need, you get rid of it. So I get a steal and the seller (who had about 35 feedback) gets rid of this big box that’s just taking up space in their life.
Their loss was my gain. Literally took me five minutes to unbox the standing desk and set it up, and what a game changer it is. Makes the old thrifted desk I’ve had for a million years feel brand new. In hindsight, this would have easily been worth spending $200. But I can use the $100 I saved through waiting to upgrade something else, or on some new inventory. And the cycle of scavenging continues.
Completely agree with you about how easily many sellers give up, Jay, and I’m especially grateful this week for the podcast and the forums. Because I knew about all of the chaos surrounding item specifics when they were introduced for clothing, I’ve used item specifics with my trading cards and other collectibles listings ever since. So there has been very little change to my listing process. I assume the item specifics are taken into account with search rank as well because my sales are relatively normal despite all of the changes. I suspect that would not be the case if I had not used any item specifics at all, even though item specifics are mostly unnecessary with unique collectibles and unique trading cards where interested buyers are using very specific title or description search terms to find what they want for their collections.
5/2/21 – 5/8/21
Total items in store: 2300
Items sold: 41
Gross sales: $2150.10 (up 14.5% from one year ago)
Net sales: $1586.72 (up 26.3% from one year ago)
Highest price sold (net): $149.23 — a PSA graded Bowman Chrome blue autograph of Trevor Larnach, Minnesota Twins top young outfielder who was called up for his debut last week
Lowest price sold (net): $8.71 — printing plate of former hockey goalie Felix Potvin
I sold almost nothing last Sunday, just one sale for $23. I love a good conspiracy and I listened to the podcast on Sunday night, so for all of Sunday evening I was thinking about Jay’s throttling theory. Then as I was falling asleep, I remembered that I had kept my premium store this whole time, after debating a downgrade to basic. I hope to grow the store to 4000 items by this time next year so I figured let’s leave it at premium for now. So I couldn’t blame eBay throttling for my lack of Sunday sales after all! Well, of course I could still blame eBay if I really wanted to…but that’s why I like to hang out here. Our theories are all tongue in cheek. We know that the real solution is to list more.
So that’s what I did, 20 or so items each day, from last Monday to Wednesday. Then my sales were consistent the rest of the week and my weekly numbers are roughly where they’ve been for the last few months. It still “felt” slow in terms of numbers of items sold but this week, most of my sales were in that nice $50 to $100 range. Other weeks I usually sell a few more items and hit that sales number through quantity. But it mostly all evens out.
In “eBay fixing a problem that doesn’t exist” news, my main niche of sports cards received a big jolt this week in terms of eBay categories, subcategories and required item specifics. This was the message I received in the eBay app yesterday:
We’re optimizing trading card listings
Starting May 11, you’ll be asked to add new info to your listings that will help more buyers discover your items.
Learn more ➔
Now you can list sports cards by product type
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Sports cards will be changing from sports categories into product type categories. Select from singles, packs, boxes, and more.
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You’ll be required to choose a Sport under item specifics when listing.
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If you don’t update your listings to the appropriate category, they will automatically be categorized as Sports Trading Card Singles.Item specifics are required for all trading cards
After July, you’ll be required to fill out these item specifics to keep your listing live:
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“Sports” under Sports Trading Cards.
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“Game” under Collectible Card Games.
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“Franchise” under Non-Sports Trading Cards.New options for graded and ungraded cards
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You’ll also be required to select if your card is graded or not in item specifics for single card categories.
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Graded cards have additional item specifics, like Grade, Professional Grader, and Certification Number.The biggest negative change so far is the combination of individual sport subcategories (Baseball Cards, Basketball Cards, etc) into one large Sports Trading Card Singles category. Now buyers who are interested in, for example, particular types of Panini (manufacturer) Prizm (popular set) soccer cards (like autographs or popular numbered variants like gold vinyl prizms or white sparkle prizms) have to wade through thousands of basketball, baseball and football Prizm listings. Before this change, that buyer could easily search for their prizm cards in the subcategory Soccer Cards. Really bizarre what eBay is thinking here.
This change has also created a glitch where I receive offers even if they are below my minimum offer price. I’ve used the decline offers below setting for so long that I forgot about how many buyers make offers that are just silly — $5 on a $30 listing and things of that nature.
Also, any time I try to send a counteroffer (regardless of the buyer’s original offer price), I receive the following error message: There is an issue processing your request.I assume this error is specific to trading cards categories, otherwise there would be a post about it on the forums. There is an easy workaround which is to decline and send a message with the price I want, but it’s already tedious after 24 hours and maybe 6 offers. I love (almost) all my buyers, but I don’t want to exchange love notes with them to make a sale.
I am hopeful that all of these issues will be resolved, or at least acknowledged as problems by eBay, by this time next week. Surprisingly, my sales were fairly steady yesterday and today despite all of the changes. I hope that continues into this weekend since 8 of my 10 highest sale days in the last month have been Fridays, Saturdays or Sundays. For now, I am going to grin and bear these changes as much as possible. Very little about my listing flow has changed since I already used item specifics, and I already have my eBay store organized with subcategories for individual sports and types of cards. But who knows what other changes eBay has in store. I will certainly read the next seller update a lot more closely, that’s for sure!
Jay, there is definitely an ebb and flow to the frenzy, like right now I am selling more baseball than anything else since the season just started. Yesterday I had 5 sales and 4 were baseball. It was a true mix — two were players who are “hot” or in the news right now, one was a vintage Brooklyn Dodgers card and another was a nice autograph rookie of a player who’s hurt and hasn’t been particularly successful yet in his career.
There is more activity with baseball in terms of individual players and their performances right now, and there are more new baseball sets being released as well. But football is about to pick up since they just had their draft (so all the top rookies are joining their new teams) and basketball and hockey are about to enter the playoffs so the prices will get more volatile. The card companies are always timing new sets to correlate with the cycle of each sport’s season. That’s not to say every card collector or speculator is always chasing the newest set (far from it), but there are always spikes around popular sets or a hot player’s best new card with their current team.
Also, a lot of card collectors and speculators buy into what’s known as case breaks, where you buy up your team (or player) for x amount (where x is a fraction of the full price of all the boxes) and the breaker opens the cards on camera and you get whatever cards of your team he gets. This might be an amazing rare card of the best player on the team, or you might get skunked and get nothing very good. It’s all a gamble, but I’m sure for those who get lucky, it’s a lot of fun. The biggest breakers (and this is a huge industry within the card world now — the majority of boxes are opened by breakers) must bring in hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue annually. A lot of them also have eBay stores and they will list your card for you directly on eBay after the break. That’s how I acquire a lot of my inventory, scavenging off of these auctions (some of which have mistakes in the listings, and others end too low because auctions are strange and unpredictable), relisting the card and waiting for the right buyer to come along. But the breaks are such a huge ecosystem for the new sets that I think enough of the speculators who started buying and selling cards during the pandemic (since they were “hot) will remain sucked in. And of course there was already a market for cards before this, with both collectors and speculators.
One of the interesting things about the cards is it’s one of the rare niches where what you buy today might be worth a lot more in a few months or a few years. Versus just the classic waiting for the right buyer to come along. Of course, you have to pick the right players and types of cards, which requires both luck and skill, and then sell at the right time. I could drive myself crazy thinking about the cards I sold two or three years ago which are worth far more today because the player has gone on to stardom and the speculative frenzy around the “next hot card” is probably at (or close to) a peak right now. I used to think about that a lot more. But that’s so much wasted energy, especially when scavenging gives you the gift of time and flexibility. With an eBay business, every day can be the day where you move forward and grow the business a little more.
4/25/21 – 5/1/21
Total items in store: 2305
Items sold: 52
Gross sales: $2242.35 (down 0.9% from one year ago)
Net sales: $1639.79 (up 11.9% from one year ago)
Highest price sold (net): $528.65 — details below
Lowest price sold (net): $7.30 — a jersey card of former Philadelphia Flyers goalie Ray Emery, who passed away a few years ago at a young age
Definitely felt the spring/summer slowdown strongly these last few weeks, but I was saved this week by an unusual high dollar sale. The card I sold hit on all the elements that create value in modern sports cards: the card contained a large and unusual jersey swatch, it was autographed, had a low serial number, a shiny design, it’s a rookie card, from a popular set and it’s a popular player. I knew when I acquired this card that it would sell well, and as I kept getting watchers on the listing (over 30+ by the time I sold), I kept increasing the price slightly. But a $600+ offer was too much to turn down.
Most of the cards I sell get taped in between cardboard and maybe bubble wrap and shipped in a small envelope. The Derwin James card I sold got the premium treatment — double wrapped and sent in a small box with extra cardboard for protection. My buyer’s treasure made it all the way from New Jersey to California (surely to a collector or speculator with a wealth of nice Chargers cards) in just two days. Really demonstrates what an incredible infrastructure USPS has.
The card that I sold is a Derwin James card. James is a talented young football player in his second or third year but by no means one of the best players in the league. And he’s a defensive safety, not a quarterback or running back or wide receiver. And he plays for the Los Angeles Chargers, not the Patriots or Cowboys or Packers.
While this was a huge sale for me (my second highest sale this year), and almost certainly one of the best Derwin James cards, it’s pennies compared to high dollar cards of more popular, or collectible, players. Regular rookie cards (no autograph, no jersey, no serial numbering, no shine) from the same popular set as my Derwin James card (Panini Select) of the best young quarterback Patrick Mahomes routinely sell for over $1000. And this isn’t all pandemic or “sports card bubble” related — this level of speculative frenzy has been around cards, to one degree or another, for 15+ years.
I had another buyer this week who bought 10 oversized autograph cards of 1950s New York Yankees and Giants and Brooklyn Dodgers, which wasn’t nearly as lucrative a sale but it felt nice to clear out 10 relatively low-dollar (~$10 each) items at once.
Also, Jay, I loved your sad to happy story. I related to it so strongly, especially in terms of needing to find my own way in my early twenties and struggling to create those strong bonds beyond what my family gave me, which often wasn’t much. It is such a joy to hear about the shop finally opening and to think about all that it will bring to the community, especially for your younger employees for many of whom this will be their first job. That first job shapes a young person so dramatically and it’s great to see how you are taking this step that will affect so many people’s lives for the better.
Keep listing, everyone. Even if this summer remains slow, it will pay off around the holidays.
4/18/21 – 4/24/21
Total items in store: 2261
Items sold: 63
Gross sales: $2390.16 (up 16.2% from one year ago)
Net sales: $1604.69 (up 9.7% from one year ago)
Highest price sold (net): $112.68 — a black parallel rookie card from the flagship Topps set of Los Angeles Angels star Shohei Ohtani (whose nickname is the “Japanese Babe Ruth” since he is the rare combination of both pitcher and outfielder) graded 9 mint
Lowest price sold (net): $7.61 — an authenticated autograph of longtime Dodgers pitching coach Joe Becker
I’m not sure if this is unique to my niche or just an odd week, but it’s felt like the buyers with the deep pockets were out playing in the nice weather and getting vaccinated. I’m fortunate to have had a high quantity of sales this week, but I’m thinking that eBay might see a significant summer slowdown this year as people gravitate back to outdoor activities and small to mid sized gatherings. I hope to get the inventory level up over 3000 listings by the end of the summer so that my sales level remains somewhat stable, but that will be challenging if I keep selling 60 items a week!
Regardless of how eBay goes this summer, I’m sure business at the new Broad Porch Coffee will be booming! Exciting times, and I’m really looking forward to “coffee talk” over the next few months.
Thanks Jay. It has been a slow build to this sales level the last couple years, some missteps along the way and a lot of unglamorous work, but it’s nice to have the pipeline in place. I have enough confidence in my processes and enough of a diverse inventory within the trading cards niche that I know I’ll be ok regardless of what happens with the card ‘bubble.’ It’s a bit of an odd feeling as my young adult life was full of financial struggle, but it’s nice to think beyond that and even start to dream about some of the opportunities you and Ryanne have pursued. Can’t wait to hear about the shop opening! We are all rooting for you both.
