Since quite a while ago, I’ve tried to keep a separate discretionary fund for spending on my hobbies. This discretionary fund is supported by non-salary income that I make on the side doing whatever random things (e.g. surveys, selling stuff, commissions, etc.). Most of the time, there wasn’t a real goal for the fund, so I would just pad the fund because I liked making money doing things. Flipping physical TCG cards around the COVID boom and selling digital cards/decks on PTCGO (the latter of which I made quite a bit of money on) really helped me build it up a good amount.
More recently, the majority of incoming money has come from a separate at-will contract position I stumbled upon, but that position is probably now closed, so I’ve moved back to trying to sell cards and other non-TCG items here and there to help offset purchases. I’m still pretty comfortably in the black, but, for whatever reason, I always feel a bit uncomfortable if I’m spending money without concurrently having some way to bring in money too.
Like a lot of people said, it is really difficult to flip cards at this point. Occasionally I would win a bid on eBay for significantly below market price, but its not the norm. I’m slowly putting salary into my collection, but occasionally getting good deals do help out once in a while.
Bought cards for the first few years of my collection, i always love multiple copies so I have multiple of each cards I like in my collection. I had to sell some of the sun and moon stuff abit early but 2019 to 2021 was 3 years of only buying buying, so I started selling most of my duplicates to purchase the new releases back then.
With some decent returns, I bought into the stamp box promos, espeon promos and some 25th anniversary promos in 2021. I liked the unique designs of the promos and felt that they should hold on pretty okay moving forward as well
After the first sale, I told myself that I would try to hold onto extra cards I like for 4-5 years and sell away the extra copies and start the cycle again. All these sound like a long time, but basically from your 5th or 6th year of collecting onwards, every year a set of releases will reach its 5th year, and if prices are decent they can be sold to buy the new releases.
Looking at the 2020 cards released, my HR pikachu vmax and friends still aint faring too well compared to their glory days in 2021-2022, so I might hold onto them for abit. Happy to say that last year, the 2019 ttgx stuff peaked and that should be able to last me for quite awhile.
Lastly pertaining to what I buy each release, I only buy what I truly like. For instance I knew eevee heroes were going to do well, but since im primarily a charizard and Pikachu collector, I only picked up the umbreon cards from the entire set. People very rarely can stand the test of time if they are not buying things that they like. This I believe, holds even for stuff that you are looking to sell in future with some probability.
Between student loan payments, mortgage and savings there’s not much left to spend on cardboard for me. I have to flip if I want to add cards to my collection. It’s harder to do these days for sure, but still lots of opportunities out there if you dig deep enough and get creative.
A lot of higher end collectors use debt and they won’t tell you that.
One of the reasons why prices are so nice right now on higher end stuff is access to credit is much more expensive, and putting money in high interest savings or bonds is a safer play.
Job income, cashing out on stocks, and doing the occasional selling on ebay and other auctions websites. I don’t tend to use more credit than I can afford to unless something exceptionally rare or a great deal comes up. I’ve learned that more limited items and popular items do better long-term if the goal is to liquidate eventually or trade.
From 2017-2022 I built my collection with most of my income working at a steel mill. In 2022 I began selling Pokemon full time on ebay.
Its way to easy to hold some items back now, but my collecting technique usually involves me getting to a point where I have to many things. Ill then consolidate the items I dont have feelings for into something else.
All of my collection is just from personal income; I did have some cards that I carried over from childhood (the stuff that my parents didn’t sell in a garage sale back in 2014…RIP ) but the lion-share I have obtained as an adult. I have sold a couple items here and there (Pokemon and non-Pokemon related collectibles) to help fund bigger purchases as well.
I used to work for a survey company about 10 years ago. The surveys that pay best are for very niche respondents. If most or even 50% of people qualify you’re not gonna make much money, points, etc taking that survey. Probably about $1.
I remember a specific survey where our client was looking for lesbians who wear men’s clothing. It paid $500 per respondent. Another for Chinese moms (in china) with a daughter under 1 that paid $300. The more specific the audience the higher the pay.
This was a long time ago (mid 2010s), so maybe things were less shady and scammy at that point? But I remember there were still some crappy survey sites. I just looked at my old records, and I guess I didn’t make that much off surveys. There’s only one that I still use today that sends me occasional surveys that pay out about $3 each. It’s easy enough, and I just let the money sit there for a bit, so it feels semi-nice to cash out like $70 or whatever (but it takes a while to accumulate).
Yeah, selling cards/decks on PTCGO was a pretty nice side income. I’m still surprised about how honest people were with those transactions, given that they violated both the PTCGO ToS and Ebay ToS (Ebay didn’t allow selling of digital items at that time). All Ebay transactions could have been easily disputed for a full refund with no real recourse for the sellers. The digital cards could be pretty expensive too. I think at some points, Tapu Lele (when it was a Standard staple) cost more digitally than physically, and people were still buying. Those were some interesting times.
Majority with my regular income but i still have a lot of bulk inventory from my pre-covid purchases when i used to buy bigger lots to go through that i now sell as bundles, non tcg purchases from japan also sell quite well when i buy bigger lots for single grimer/muk items and sell some of the other items.
I try to do 100% recycling money back into itself. The things I have noticed is that
When deals are great for cards, selling anything in the market is very tough and illiquid. When prices are high, liquidity is high.
That is why having a flipping or selling to buy business or hobby is tough sometimes…
I’m surprised at the amount of people who claim to fund their collections through flipping cards. Other than the big ebay account operators on here who actually have receipts or those who have been at it for 5+ years… I’m a little sceptical.
) but the lion-share I have obtained as an adult. I have sold a couple items here and there (Pokemon and non-Pokemon related collectibles) to help fund bigger purchases as well.
