Hi all, I’ve been having lots of fun attending card shows in the SoCal area and watching vendor POVs on YouTube. I’m curious about the vendor community and if there are many vendors in the community here.
What got you started?
What are some of the hardest challenges you face as a vendor?
How much time do you spend pricing out cards? Does it slow down your dealmaking at shows?
How do you track your inventory and deal flow/history?
I think many people are fascinated with the vending experience these days and what goes on behind the scenes. Any insights you could share would be greatly appreciated!
First of all I’m not a “full time” pokemon seller. I only have a very large collection I’m selling (which will take me several years)
I started because my children are not interested in the complete collection. Will take me a few years to sell most of it.
Answering the question “what is you best price” on the nicest way you can.
Pricing takes a lot of time, at least if you want to price your items fair. On top of that, people asking for “your best price” are annoying. My best price is on that tag.
If I want to sell a lot, there were times I did make deals when people took half my inventory that show. But serious if I have a 1 dollar card and still get the question " can you do 50 cent?" might makes me mad sometimes. Why the hell do you think I took the time to price those.
What is sold is gone. I don’t buy I’m only selling my “left overs”
To what is there to track? I count after each show and most times I’m happy with the results.
But again, I’m not a full time seller. I only have a very very large collection and not willing to sell in “bulk”.
Thank you for your response! I laughed at the “can you do 50 cent” part…
I think people are realizing or should realize its such a slim margin business and really the best way to price “fairly” is to get an accurate grasp of the market and just agree as buyer and seller what % is fair to sell at (roughly 70-85%) and to buy at (roughly 80-100%).
But getting that true market price definitely can be tedious and time consuming…
I’ve only vended once as a favor to a friend so I’m by no means an expert but one thing I found surprisingly difficult was figuring out how to organize/display the inventory in a semi intuitive manner that made it easy for buyers/myself to find.
Coming up with a pricing strategy was pretty challenging too. My initial strategy was to price everything on the low end of market thinking it would take a lot of the back and forth out of the process. I learned people always want to feel like they are getting something off no matter how good the price is. Looking back I think I would have had more sales by pricing things a little higher and giving myself room to “come down”.
And as Mr. Garrison mentioned, starting a bit higher and leaving room to “come down” on sticker to help people feel like they won.
But going back to my prior statement, we could get rid of this song and dance if people could just quickly and accurately check market prices when making the deal and doing a fair deal, but at chaotic card shows I imagine it’s a real time drag trying to price out every time…
I’ve definitely walked away from tables where there was a big deal happening and knew I’d be standing there for 10 minutes or more before my turn.
Well for me it’s the same way handle those “uptrade challenges” as the “can you do this?”
I just say no.
One thing is for real, if you have to much hurry you miss the best cards.
I do know people who know what I’m selling are willing to wait in line.
While I don’t take my common/uncommon binders with me to Amerika, overhere people see I have ordered everything so they (or I) can find the missing card easily. However it does take a little time.
And don’t forget, most vendors are not deep into collecting.
Also a big chunk of them doesn’t even know how to play the game either. So for “background” information they s…
The hardest people to deal with are fellow vendors/people that sell cards for a living. There are plenty of great vendors of course but the absolute lowest offers I get are always from these type of people just thinking of how they can flip the card for profit. Like, what do you think I’m trying to do? Almost every single card I’ve sold to a fellow vendor was just when they offered a fair price because they wanted the card for their personal collection.
Card pricing takes up a majority of the time when making deals. It’s the most annoying part.
Really depends on where you are vending and how much you paid for the table. Vending is a fun experience but obviously at the end of the day you need to make money. I’ve vended at small locals shows that were literally 50 bucks for the weekend. On the other hand big shows can be several hundred + for the weekend.
Small shows you can probably get away with a small selection. One local show I think I had 10 or 12 cards total and still made a decent profit.
Vert if you’re looking to dip your toes into vending I’d highly recommend starting at a small local show where you can get a table for next to nothing and don’t have to travel, then working your way up to the bigger ones. That’s what I did.
Liquidity! I will happily take 80% in certain bulk deals. There’s always an opportunity cost to holding inventory.
Optimizing my use of table space. I can only put so many items in each case. Making my tables as value-dense as possible while also making sure my inventory is desirable enough to sell in person is a constant issue that changes as trends do. value density is also important for travel costs. And if I have to check a bag, risk goes up.
Table location at large shows can be unpredictable too. Slabs sell better near the entrance to shows. In the future, I might hardly bring slabs at all if my table location isn’t fantastic. Raw cards are usually much more value dense compared to slabs.
All my cards are stickered, and when the market is flat or down, I don’t spend much time rechecking stickers before a show. People can show me comps and easily negotiate me down on the spot. But when the market is up, I spend much longer restickering because undermarket stickers will ruin my margin. Anyone who doesn’t sticker their cards is losing sales because of it.
Tracking this super precisely isn’t worth my time for the value it adds at the moment. I roughly know my buy and sell percentages.
I’ve been vending 1/2 times a month for the past year in the Pacific Northwest
What got you started?
Vending is the best opportunity to buy collections if you do not have a physical retail space.
What are some of the hardest challenges you face as a vendor?
Maintaining a separate “show” inventory and churning through it often enough so that I always have something new at shows. Competition has also steadily increased since Q4 of last year so I am offered fewer collections and have to pay higher percentages on what I am given.
How much time do you spend pricing out cards? Does it slow down your dealmaking at shows?
Graded cards are very easy and quick to price. A binder full of raw singles is much more time consuming. I have a pricing mat that has $1-$35+ increments on it that I can use to help price, but my strategy is normally to make an offer on the whole thing or just the top couple most liquid cards.
How do you track your inventory and deal flow/history?
I keep records of starting cash for the day and any cash outflow so that I can have a full sales record combining that with electronic payments. As a one man show, record keeping every individual thing would burden the flow of business too heavily
I want to give a little context on how I vend because honestly it influences most of the challenges I face. I try to be the vendor I enjoy seeing at shows, which is binders and binders of all kinds of raw. Little bit of everything for everyone. I don’t do a ton of high end or slabs. I’ll sell a lot of 20 $10 cards more often than 1 $200 card.
I had friends in the hobby that would vend shows. Hanging with them while they were vending gave me the itch to work at it.
My biggest challenge is inventory. Can’t keep up. Finding new inventory it the most time consuming process for me. As well as the increase in vendors/vending as made buying more competitive.
I try to vend in a way that I think is different for most to ease my pricing headache. 2-4 shows in a 2-3 week stretch then off for a month or so. Price everything for the first show and pricing will mostly hold for all of them. Then I just have to worry about the new stuff between shows. I also don’t reprice every single card each time. For example if I price check 50% of my gold cards and they’re nearly all the same, I’m assuming the other 50% are fine. A buyer will tell me if it’s too high anyway or snag a deal if I did miss something that spiked.
hahahahaha no
And to comment on a few other things that were discussed in the thread;
-Presentation/Organization is imporant imho. I find it easier to passively browse organized binders rather than chaos and everything mixed. And if you ask me if I have something, I know exactly where to find it.
-I loathe the “what’s the lowest you’ll go on this” or similar questions. Everything is priced, if you want a different number, make an offer. But every card is marked up slightly so there is room for offers. They win getting a lower price, I win with that price still being close to market.
-Small local shows are underrated. You don’t need to do a collectacon to be a vendor. My favorite show to vend is a local sports card show. Less Pokemon vendors so less competition as a seller. But there are always Pokemon buyers. Local shows tend to be shorter too which I live. I’m done and home from that sports show by 3pm and don’t feel like I torched my entire Saturday
