Hi Everyone! I am an entrepreneur who would love to help out the Pokémon space! Are there any shop owners and/or anyone that does large volumes of business in the space? I would love to learn the tough parts of running such an operation and see where I can help. Also anyone feel free to comment the part you hate the most about the hobby or any of your pain points in it! Thanks!
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Welcome!
To be perfectly honest, you really have to know about the hobby and have legitimate experience in order to provide any help to a Pokemon card business (unless you just want to assist in day-to-day things such as taking pictures, keeping track of inventory, maybe some financial stuff, etc.).
Just being an entrepreneur and having capital won’t get you very far on its own. You need to have knowledge and understanding.
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i hate entrepreneurs in the hobby
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I do too if they intend to only make money. Entrepreneurs aren’t necessarily a bad thing to introduce to a space, intent and value added are the biggest thing.
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I hear the best thing anyone could do right now is open their own grading company.
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I don’t have much capital but I have schooling in entrepreneurship and tech. I’m still pretty new to the hobby but have learned a lot through Rattle, smpratt, TCA, and others. My first set back is chilling reign but I grew up having 2001-2008 Pokémon being my childhood. Do you buy sell trade etc? How are you involved in the hobby?
I get that. There have been a lot of people who in my opinion have tried to make a quick buck. Logan Paul and the Liquid marketplace is sketch and all the grading companies coming in during the hype causes more chaos than actually solving problems. I want to be able to actually cause long lasting change in the hobby which is why I am going to the places where the most experiences are. Like E4. Would love to get as many insights as possible.
What are you specifically trying to accomplish? The initial post is pretty broad.
Ultimately there are many paths: direct sales, content creation, partnerships. Collectibles typically require money & time. I’ve done calls with numerous people who have excess funds, but there is an inherent process to becoming established. I think every major player today has been around for years.
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I’m not an expert in running a store or large business and have only sold cards on my own over the years. The only painful things I’ve come across is dealing with very fussy buyers or if something gets lost in the mail. Because of this, I tend to prefer going through a consignment process for any high value cards.
Anyway, you may want to check out Mason from Card N All Gaming on YouTube, he actually runs an LGS who sells Pokemon and offers a ton of interesting info. His Q&A videos cover a huge variety of questions you would probably have on this type of stuff more on the business side:
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I love Card N All
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I’m trying to find a need in the Pokémon community. Personally I think a better platform than Tcgplayer/ebay is needed for finding/selling/trading cards. Completing master sets has been quite the process for me. I also have seen the pain in store fronts with the high fees in selling online. My idea is a platform that helps collectors find cards they want, get rid cards they don’t want and to also help store front increase their margins. Bolstering community would also be cool to see. Would love to hear what others would like to see. I have a tech background so I believe I’d be able to build such a thing.
You just described troll and toad for the most part
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What you just described sounds a lot like eBay
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If you can successfully pitch techniques that retailers can implement on their sites to filter mass-volume flippers and sneaker bots, that’d be great! The tech/utilities exists, but few use it… Kinda a cynical response there, BUT at the same time, if you have some connections to those retailers or their website devs, it’d be a HUGE help for the hobby and everyone in it.
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That is a pretty lofty goal! There have been plenty of people who tried, most have failed. There are currently groups attempting to create a marketplace, who already have seed funding, and it’s not going as planned. eBay honestly fulfills most of the markets needs.
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What you’re describing sounds similar to Cardsphere, which is a platform for “exchanging” MTG cards. The way it works is that you set offers on cards you want and if you have sufficient funds, people can send you cards at your offer prices. And vice versa, obviously. It’s a cool platform.
A similar platform might be viable for Pokemon, but I’m not sure. The difficulty in Pokemon is condition. The vast majority of people on Cardsphere are just trying to get cards to play with so condition isn’t nearly as important. But in Pokemon, it’s a very different story and I could see that being a big hurdle. I think it’s a large part of why TCGPlayer is so much bigger in MTG than it is in Pokemon.
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I love your energy and intent. Disregard anyone talking down on entrepreneurs in the space as the “collectors” take that term as part of their identity.
I think the goal is good but sounds like you’d need a lot of capital, and we can all find what we want if we try. Most of the issue (IMO) for those hard-to-find cards is that people don’t know about them so they’re very niche. If sellers want to be known, they usually register themselves on PSA or another site.
The one thing I think Logan Paul is onto is fractionalizing ownership of BIG cards or collections. A tiny stack of people can afford $10k on a card, and a ridiculously small amount would even consider it. Now if you broke them into NFTs and released 49% of them for a much lower cost then people could gold their small piece of ownership, and the owner could get royalties on trades. Rally is trying to figure this out, but I think learning about that will be the “tech” route for Pokemon cards.
The best thing you can do is learn about Pokemon collecting, and be active. I personally think you’re wanting to start a business before having the knowledge which will end in failure. I’m not trying to shill, or just pump-up Scott, but his Patreon will teach you more than any other channel. Nothing has brought me half the value of what he offers.
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Thank you for your comment! What is the name of the marketplace if you don’t mind sharing? I wonder why it’s failing. Ebay market effect too strong? How impactful do you think lowering fees would be? Selling myself it was always hurt losing 15-20% after shipping and everything. Can only imagine how hard small businesses get hit by it
Maybe trying to help larger businesses optimize is the wrong route. You could look to serve micro businesses instead since the one-man-show has plenty of pain points.
Maybe developing some specialized accounting software would be useful?
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Thank you for sharing cardsphere! Super cool site! Yeah condition has been a struggle in my journey. Have done too many returns using tcgplayer… I think a better feedback loop would allow future potential buyers to know that a seller has a bad reputation when it comes to condition specifically. Ratings can easily lose meaning if it shows 98% rather than 100%. Showing specifically “incorrect condition” could prevent ppl running into the same mistake. Condition definetly complicates things!