Welcome back, Jay and Ryanne. It was great to hear about your vacation and even better to hear about the possible new helper.
I didn’t post my numbers last week with the podcast on pause, so here are two weeks worth. I hit a milestone in sales in the last week of July. There is a small caveat related to it: the last week of July was the National Sports Card Convention so my theory is a lot of card collectors/speculators who were unable to attend were on eBay. Fear of missing out and all that. Not unlike how sales were almost all last summer. With that said, my sales are even higher than they were last summer, and I’m very eager to see what happens in the fall and winter.
One of the nice things about reaching a new level of eBay sales is that I have a huge backlog of unlisted inventory, and it’s not all junk. Finding good inventory to replace what had sold was one of my biggest obstacles as I grew the store from 500 to 1000 listings and then from 1000 to 2000. It’s nice to be able to invest in nicer inventory. That’s really why my sales are up so much — I’ve been listing a lot more and most of the items are better quality.
7/25/21 – 7/31/2021
Items sold: 100 (64 by best offer, 16 by seller initiated offer)
Gross sales: $4586.01 (up 62.7% from one year ago)
Net sales: $3279.41 (up 64.3% from one year ago)
Highest price sold (net): $469.49 — Baker Mayfield autographed cracked ice rookie
Why is this card so valuable? Mayfield is the young quarterback for the Cleveland Browns, who made the playoffs last year for the first time in 18 years. This card hit on all the elements that create value in modern cards — autograph, rookie, popular design (the cracked ice foil) and low serial number. This particular card wasn’t one that you could find in packs, instead it was released on the manufacturer Panini’s website to purchase with redemption points. The value of those points dipped dramatically last year during the early part of the pandemic, so I stocked up on points then (all eBay purchases). A lot of the most valuable cards in my store were purchased for Panini points.
Lowest price sold (net): $7.97 — Mahler Symphony No. 9 DVD
8/1/2021 – 8/7/2021
Total items in store: 3062
Items sold: 72 (55 by best offer, 2 by seller initiated offer)
Gross sales: $3925.11 (up 134% from one year ago)
Net sales: $2848.81 (up 137% from one year ago)
Highest price sold (net): $380.85 — Ryan Tannehill NFL shield patch
Cards with a unique piece of jersey in the card, like the team’s logo or NFL logo, sell for a premium. This card happens to be a popular quarterback and a very popular set (National Treasures). It sold for my full buy it now price which is always really exciting.
Lowest price sold (net): $9.81 — Lonzo Ball white pulsar prizm
This card might have been my lowest sale price of the week (in fact my only sale under $10), but a few years ago this set (Obsidian white pulsar prizms) were the most popular cards around for a brief second.
Like a lot of Panini’s most unique offerings, these particular packs were released only on their website and sold out within a few minutes. Same as the Mayfield above, these packs were also only purchasable using redemption points, the equivalent of something like $150 per pack. (Crazy I know) All of the cards in the packs have the same shiny (white pulsar) design. No autographs, no variations, no jerseys, no serial numbers. Either your pack contains good players who are worth more than what you paid, or you’re unlucky and you get skunked.
Sometimes, after you open your packs and don’t get the new hot rookie or star player worth hundreds, you might list all the cards on eBay for auction to get whatever money you can for them. That might be $20 for two packs’ worth (6 cards) because auctions are weird and unpredictable. It’s so strange to think about how many modern card buyers regularly spend hundreds of dollars on packs or boxes hoping to get lucky, and when they don’t, turn around and sell their pulls for a fraction of the original price.
