The Cardboard Investment

Collecting Evolved

My free time was now consumed with organizing cards, researching their prices, listing cards on Ebay and shipping them out when they were sold. It was a rush every time I looked at Ebay to see another card sell. The feeling became addicting. This euphoria of getting a sale soon transformed into the thrill of the hunt. I went back to my roots and began looking into the vintage sports card market. I started using some of the profits from selling my friends inherited collection to buy vintage baseball cards, just like my father had when he was a kid. Finally realizing that condition was the key factor in price of vintage cards, I scoured new listings daily looking for centered, clean, sharp corners copies of players my father had collected. Now the excitement of selling a card had changed into me eagerly waiting for that mail day to come when the 50 year old baseball card I purchased showed up at my house. During this time I also began hunting for new products to open. With now only a few hobby sports cards shops left in my state, most of these new purchases came from retail stores. My world was quickly becoming consumed with sports cards.

I started discussing what I had found out about the sports card market with one of my younger brothers. We were no longer as close as we were when we were kids, because of life and living in different cities, but he as well was instantly drawn back into a hobby once forgotten. Soon sports cards became a common point of interest for us both. He began buying and selling sports cards on Ebay as well and my love for the hobby only grew. Now that we both has amassed a sizable collection, my brother informed me of a sports card show that was happening close to where he lived. We decided to split a table and set up as dealers. I still had a number of cards from the collection my friend inherited, a few cards from my childhood that I might be able to get a few dollars from, and the beginning of a nice vintage collection of baseball cards. My brother focused on newer cards of his favorite local players, and we figured we had a nice variety of cards for our first card show.

Not knowing what to expect, we show up at the local strip mall and find a variety of other dealers. A few guys close to our ages and a few guys that have been in the hobby for half a century. We were pleasantly surprised at how welcoming the fellow dealers were, and it wasn't long before other dealers were coming to look at what we brought. It was a rather big commitment to set up at a card show. It ran Friday-Sunday, it cost money to set up at the card show, you had to purchase food throughout the weekend and of course there were cards from other collectors that needed to be added to my collection. We did not make a ton of money, but the atmosphere and the ability to talk and show off cards with like minded individuals was enough for us to keep coming back.

We continued setting up at this semi regular show, and began to make friends with some of the other dealers, and also started to familiarize ourselves with some of the local collectors as well. One thing that was evident right off was that almost everyone used all the money they made from selling cards to buy more. Some used the money to gamble on new boxes and packs at the local card shop, others used it to buy cards from some of the other dealers. With more experience, we started to mold our collections to what was popular and started gearing our purchases towards what we could sell at the next card show. My brother and I continued to do all the card shows in the area that we could find. We soon learned that it was a small group of dealers that traveled around to the majority of these shows. We became a small part of this traveling show, looking forward to the next weekend event and trying to keep up with the trends.

One thing we quickly realized was one of the more worthy gamble in trading cards was buying baseball cards of recently drafted players. These players wouldn't make the majors for a few years, but there cards could be purchased for a few dollars and worth hundreds over a period of months or years. Soon the word "Prospecting" started to float around, and we had to know what it was.