I read This on Reddit about Shopify handling Black Friday traffic daily. It’s not just Pokémon experiencing the uptick in stay at home buyers. An interesting pattern plenty of other businesses are experiencing according to the comments.
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In a warped way, covid may have boosted the hobby by shifting the demand curve right (online shopping) and supply curve left (psa grading hiatus)…
Also for international collectors, we have also seen profits from the USD strengthening
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the usd strength has for now put my collection value up but in turn has put me off purchasing from overseas as the exchange rate makes cards more expensive. its a catch22. shipping seems ambiguous as well lots of sellers wont ship down here until lockdowns are opened up.
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So many things at play here… people are bored at home, those who haven’t lost jobs or had pay reduced may actually be saving money since they’re not going our and spending on entertainment/activities, and some countries are sending payments to people to help with the recession. It will be interesting to see as the recession goes on, if the same trend continues or if people begin spending less on non-essentials.
i’ve definitely noticed an increase in sales, alongside an increase in dumb questions.
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Everything I listed this week at market value or slightly above on our Craigslist equivalent sold within 12 hours. Also the views and “added to favourites” went crazy, which shows activity overall - I used the demand to get rid of some doubles ^^ I don’t sell stuff very often, but this was madness.
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Bingo! I don’t think anyone saw this coming. My daily shipments are almost the volume of my weekly shipments.
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@smpratte, this might be a good time to browse through your YouTube analytics! Maybe the rabbit hole jumping there shows a similar pattern 
I’ve noticed an uptick in Patreon!
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I was already thinking collectible stores are going to really struggle vs online sellers. Then convid happened, I see a lot of stores closing their doors in the near future. Physical stores are loosing to random people selling collectible from their basement on ebay right now.
Feels like a blockbuster vs netflix situation.
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I never understood why some stores don’t have both a physical and online storefront.
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Ironically in my country the USD has never been so low as today, in the past 5 years.
Absolutely, a local comic book shop near me made a facebook post about a year ago saying to support local businesses not online retailers. I think they don’t understand for every small physical store their are 20+ equally small online stores run by the exact same kind of people.
If you have a physical store with no online store or any kind of online presence you might as well close down because you will not be successful in 2020 and beyond
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I try to support local businesses when I can. I just think of this joke. A person is on a roof during a flood and he gets three people coming by offering help. The person says, “no, god will save me.” Then person dies and asks god why they didn’t save them. He says he sent three people to save them. I feel this is parallel for some local owners who refuse to adapt.
On another note. I know the amount of money isn’t going to sustainable for many of the people scooping up cards. There’s bound to be some amount a blowback from all this. I don’t think prices will drop and devalue completelely, but they might have a correction. Have either of you seen prices go up and down? or do collectibles have more of a linear growth? @smpratte @garyis2000
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Pokemon is a tiny part of most LGS’s business. A lot of stores don’t have the time or resources to go into listing single cards.
not every store is going to be the next troll and toad or tcg player but they can start small and start building their online presence. Even if it’s something small like an eBay store or an amazon store. There needs to be some sort of long term plan, walk in traffic alone is no longer good enough to stay in business in this current market.
For years I’ve been saying entertainment and collectibles are always safe and actually boom during times of crisis. I’ve said it here on e4 many times. What’s happening now is just another example of that but even better for collectibles because there’s less entertainment because of the nature of the crisis.
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I think two big factors that have caused the increase in online shopping (of cards specifically) are the following:
- The nostalgia that cards bring is a great comfort during the stressful and uncertain times we are experiencing
- Some people have more discretionary income due to saving more money by staying home
@garyis2000 thanks for information. It’s simply crazy to see this growth.
One of the car auction (BAT or Bring a Trailer) sites was subscribed to sent this email out about their metrics
BaT continues to see record site traffic and strong results this month. Here are some statistics on auction activity through the first two weeks of April (and % change from April, 2019):
Total # of bids: 16,265 (+35%)
Value of lots sold: $13,571,969 (+35%)
New users: 7,573 (+49% )
Average auction views: 14,552 (+4%)
Average auction watchers: 785 (+24%)