Do you work for a brick and mortar lgs that sells pokemon cards- possibly singles?
What’s ideology/tactics have you noticed for your store to generate Pokemon traffic? Do you bring out a few cool expensive cards from your collection, just to showcase it and to create demand like ‘we have nice cards’, even at risk of it being actually bought? Or are all your pokemon singles for sale, if singles are even sold?
The stores that sell singles- is that pretty successful?
I’m still not quite sure how lgs profitable and can pay overhead unless they sell a mass of sealed products, which is unlikely during the corona times.
LGS Poke single cards seem to be a dying trend, unfortunate for us buyers.
Raffles are not feasible for singles, even if it sounds like a good idea. It can’t possibly encourage that many people to buy boosters for raffle tickets either… I dont think lgs are moving towards raffle theme lol
There should be a lot of poke store workers on e4, so I’m focused on brick and mortar techniques used for their poke inventory. I was surprised to hear someone in the finance responsibility thread say it seem like he is constantly visiting the post office, when he has a storefront to service folks at
I think it’s great for the pokemon market when local game stores carry single cards for kids and customers to shop and buy from. I remember that as a highlight when younger.
Many lgs are choosing not to hold singles, either because there’s too many pokemon to keep track of or their focus is magic/sports, and I wondering if the e-4 poke store workers, who are knowledgeable to price cards properly, are still providing pokemon card services to their local communities.
Maybe this thread should be moved to Insider’s or Price & Market section… Where are the poke-shop service workers/owners at? How is business
I go to a shop in Vegas that sells singles. is one of the few shops that I have seen that has singles. Nothing is graded. They look up prices in real time online to determine how much they want to sell the card for. The card prices start based on the assumption the card is near mint and then you would have to negotiate based on condition.
I love that they have singles. But really dislike their pricing methodology.
Single sales done in shop can be done online minus the overhead (plus the shipping). LGSs must have something else that online shops can’t do in order to compete.
Pretty sure I’ve been to this same store. The problem is that they go off TCGPlayer “market value” which had them trying to sell me a MP Kyogre star for $500 last year.
I think a lot of LGS survive by creating a community/culture. One of the ones near me is pretty big, they have events going on all the time, and they have food available. People will spend an entire weekend day there. I think creating that flow of people and making people want to be there kind of helps sell their stuff for them, including singles.
Anyone can buy singles anywhere online, but people want to be part of that experience and want to give their money to the store to support them. Of course the pandemic slowed a lot of this down for now though.
@jonbo, is spot on. LGS are usually community hubs for people to play a few games and wind down from the stress of daily life, be it from work or school so profits are driven mostly by players and not so much by collectors. Also, players love to trade cards (it is a TCG after all), so if you run events and sell singles, you are still having to compete with your own customers in a way.
Sales of singles are an optional and negligible part of their business as most of their in-store profit comes from running events and selling accessories, snacks, etc. I think the successful tactic for LGS’s is to sell singles online because the market reach and low postage costs justify it greatly over keeping a bunch of binders in stock and having to keep a watchfull eye on a customer that spends one hour going through it to end up buying a $2.50 card.
Also, as a shop you need to pay tax on whatever items you sell so even if you give it your best shot at a fair price, it is near impossible to outcompete casual sellers/traders who don’t need to be tax registered.
This being said, Japan seems to handle it differently from western countries and you can easily find shops there that don’t even have a playing area and are exclusively dedicated to selling singles. I can only imagine that would be quite an unprofitable business model in a western country.
Personally, I would love to open a shop selling graded cards in which my customers could go in a scour through thousands of cards (as people used to do with record shops back in the 80’s) and spend my days talking to people about the hobby and exchanging ideas with fellow collectors, but the collecting community within our hobby in the west is too small/fragmented and digitally oriented for that to ever be possible.
Run Events and create a community. Most of the time you’ll probably be breaking even/making only a few dollars per event. Think of them more as advertising rather than profit generation. If people feel like they’re getting a bad deal on the prizing, they’ll go somewhere else if the option is available.
Keep a wide variety of cheap Ex’s, GX’s, and V’s in stock. You can sell these at a higher profit margin that anything else and they hold their value better. People don’t mind paying $3 for an Ultra Rare they really like. Keep in mind most people who like Pokemon are casual collectors.
Have a kiosk or something that shows your online inventory. Chances are nobody is going to buy a random high end $50 Hyper Rare from your case, so you want it online. Doing this is a good way to still give people that opportunity, but have it listed on a platform where it’ll probably actually sell.
BUY CARDS FOR CASH. Not only is this the absolute best way to get people into your store, but at the same time allows you to constantly refresh your inventory. We usually buy for around 40-60% depending on the card (and often higher if it’s high end), but also give a 20% trade in bonus. (Also buy bulk if you have a good outlet).
Pokemon is super profitable for us. We actually started mainly doing Pokemon, then branched out into different games (Yugioh is our most profitable, but I’m sure that varies depending on the environment). The tips I gave will work for just about any game, and diversifying is the best way to ensure the long term viability of an LGS. We just hit our 10 year anniversary, and if everything goes right we’ll definitely be around for at least another 10.
What’s wrong with this methodology? Or are the cards never priced based on condition and *always* priced as NM?[/quote]
Exactly. The cards are always priced as if they are near mint even if they are heavily played.
You would have to ask about the price of the card. They look it up online. Then you would have to say “this card is damaged, not near mint.” Then argue about how much damage there is and how much cards are selling for with that amount of damage.
It’s like you are Negotiating to pay for the exact grade condition the card is in, but the card isn’t graded. Would rather just buy a graded card.
I’ve been to the same store. I agree, I hate the methodology for pricing. It’s pretty anticonsumer imo. The whole process of an employee taking out certain cards and looking them up, which seems to vary from employee to employee. I wish they just looked up a price and put a sticker on it before putting each card in a display case. Not to mention the awkwardness of if I want this or this card and they unlock the case, take the cards over to the counter, spend several minutes looking up each card, just for me to say no thats too expensive. I get no idea on how they’re pricing these cards, if its fair or not. I dont even want to bother to asking tbh.
ALSO they do this for common cards which they wont even let me look through for certain older common cards to complete sets. I walked in and asked if I can look at older common cards and they were like “which one?” What do you mean which one? Do you think I came in here to buy a single 50 cent card? This is why despite being one of the only shops in vegas to sell vintage singles, I dont buy from them when I have the convenience to use ebay where I can see the cards condition and price and determine if I want it or not.
Sounds like having a community is important and events drives traffic. I agree.
Shops that host poke league events and sell singles are nice, as it allows players can acquire cards for their decks, versus having to buy them online. LGs ability to purchase cards at a lower price is overlooked by the lgs that are not selling singles. I can see how it would be frustrating to not be able to see cards and buy them with set prices.