I am a newish collector and I have come to really enjoy Pokemon that I end up holding everything I’m buying. I’m trying to pace myself and stick to a budget but there are times that I tend to overspend in hopes to sell the rest and recoup my costs. More often than not, I find myself wanting to hold because I like it too much to sell or the prices aren’t just there yet.
May I ask for some advice? I would like to have my hobby sustain itself and to be able to collect the cards I want but I feel worried that I’m just overspending.
Thanks a lot. Any advice would be appreciated. I already have eBay and Amazon set up but I just need to use it for Pokemon more.
TLDR: Any tips and tricks in how to set up a routine and sell often?
Buying items with the intention plays a large part in it imo.
If you bought something you intend to sell down the line, its easier to let it go than if you justify every purchase for personal collection. Sometimes a piece comes around that you want to acquire but don’t have the funds it becomes a question of do you keep what you have or sell to purchase the other item.
You can’t always hold if you over spend, but if you spend within your means it makes it significantly easier to keep things and let them work out over time to a margin you feel more comfortable with.
From everything I have read, it takes a while to get to a point where you have stuff you want to sell for a profit unless you build it into your strategy early on. The market also fluctuates and takes time to go in either direction. A lot of the long term collectors seem to have a good supply and are continually selling or flipping fairly consistently as they know all the cards and market better (i.e. the most market knowledge and foresight). The problem for me is, I tend to focus on fairly high end cards and I try to get them at the best prices that I can usually by “sniping” auctions or just consistently searching around for deals from the market knowledge I have so far (also a lot of patience). Almost all of the cards I have bought I feel I could make a profit on, but the issue I face is like yourself I want to keep them for my collection long term mainly.
Basically I am yet to almost never buy a 2nd or 3rd of the same card because A) I rarely find it at the same or lower price due to rarity/opportunity cost of the 1st card I acquired B) It’s money that I’d sooner put towards other card(s) instead. So until I reach my longer term collecting goals, it’s going to be a while before I have the option to sell more unless I somehow free up more capital to spend and obtain multiple copies of a card I’d like to flip or sell.
The good thing for me personally is I have a steady cashflow from a secondary income I established long ago which I put into collectibles but also other assets so I never really feel a ‘need’ to sell any cards at this point even if I had an excess supply to do so. Maybe at some point down the road I’ll eventually have cards I can sell off, but personally as I build my collection it hasn’t been put into my strategy yet.
You may want to check out these threads/articles, they may be really helpful for you:
I’m extremely similar to yourself in that I can’t justify having 2 of a card as I’d prefer to spend the money on something else.
The only thing I’ve started to do is with modern is buy raw dupes to stand a higher chance of a high grade and then will sell the dupes when they come back - albeit I don’t foresee huge profit this way but I atleast stand a higher chances of high grade card of what I want.
Ofcourse - there is limits to this too.
OP - I think selling comes down to if your strategy changes (I’ve started letting go of some pikachu and charizard cards as I no longer desire them as much but this is what I started with) or, you come across a card you ‘really want’ and it forces you to sell items to afford it. Typically, you know you could at some point get your original cards back (maybe at a higher price) but you know the card you’re going for doesn’t come up often.
You’ll see a lot of the high high end collectors doing this.
Hey! Not directly related to selling but still on topic imo.
Personally, I have a monthly budget setup through my bank (set to auto-deposit on the 1st) for all my hobby work (pokemon cards, video games, music gear, etc). If I’d like to add more towards that budget, I have to sell something to add funds. Whatever I don’t spend in one month would then roll over into the next. It just helps create a space where you’re more conscious of spending and forces you to prioritize certain purchases over another e.g. “Wow, I would really like ‘X’ but not as much as ‘Y’ so I should either sell something or wait until next month so I could afford it.”
I think establishing this framework has really helped me appreciate my purchases more as well. It feels significantly more rewarding knowing you stayed on budget & then when that card/box etc. arrives you know you didn’t have to stretch yourself thin or overspend.
I think a lot of new collectors have this mentality where they’ll buy not only what they want, but other stuff they don’t really want with the intention of selling for a “profit” down the road. As someone who thought like this when I was new, I can say that it took me YEARS of learning and practice before I was really confident in my abilities to generate profit that I could put back into my collection.
My best advice (based on my personal experience, may be different for others) is to just focus on what you want to collect to start. Why spend money on what you don’t want to get what you do want when you can just buy what you like in the first place?
Eventually (after like 3-4 years of collecting) I got to a place where I felt like I could consistently buy items to make a profit on (whether through flipping, grading, holding then reselling, etc). Unsurprisingly, the items I felt I could profit on were what I collected, because I knew that market inside and out. The stuff I bought at the beginning to flip/grade/resell I didn’t do well on at all and that money would have been a lot better spent on my initial collection goals.
I find it hard to completely sustain the hobby with just buying and selling. I think the people who are able to do it successfully have a revolving door of graded cards coming in every month to replenish their inventory. The best and most reliable profit is from buying a card cheap, grading it yourself, and selling it. Finding good deals and flipping is not very reliable or repeatable in my opinion.
Pretty much only when I happen to adjust a collection goal, and I decide something doesn’t quite fit into what I want to collect anymore, or when I bite the bullet on something I avoided multiple times before due to it being “out of my price range” but then decide to pick it up anyway (usually for a higher price than when I had the first chance, learning moments there) when the right opportunity arises. In those cases I might end up selling something I am less attached to, or something I’ve maybe grown tired of looking at, to make up for that purchase financially (either partially or entirely).
I’ve probably sold 3 items at most since I started, but I will start selling soon part of my collection as I’ve accumulated too many duplicates and some I’ve lost interest like 20th Anniversary starter decks as I consider them outside my collecting range of older cards.
This is incredible advice imo. I think it’s very easy when you’re beginning a new hobby to just get trigger happy and absorb as much as possible but this perspective is so important. Even within the past year or so, I’ve definitely focused and refined my purchasing significantly.
The one piece of advice i can offer is to just build that Ebay feedback, it’s important. Even if it takes the pain staking process of selling really cheap cards at hardly a profit. It’s worth it to have trust built on your ebay account. I sold one card on the basis of my feedback score alone, (500+, which is nothing still, but it’s far better than 0) The rest will come with experience and time.
^ what this guy said. Unless you have a stash of cards (say, you bought up a bunch of shining gyrados’s in 2009 for 15 bucks each) and have been leaking those cards out on ebay or grading them, its hard to reliably flip to sustain your hobby. I mean, you can flip cards quickly, but what’s the point if you make 5-10 bucks per transaction? shipping and ebay fees often reduce that 5-10 to 0. As some other commentators have sold, flipping or selling low value cards may be worth it if you have low ebay feedback, but other than that it’s often not worth the time.
