A Tale of International Intrigue and Neglect
I recently decided I would sell some of my baseball and hockey cards. I’d been planning on selling some of them since I started collecting way back in the late 80s, but never really got around to it. A trade or two here, an Ebay sale there, but nothing really too serious.
What spurred me on now was a combination of organizing and ambition.
My cards were in complete disarray. One shelving unit filled with boxes and binders of cards. So I set upon the task of organizing them. I wanted to keep my Expos cards (still collecting them) some rookies which might be more valuable later, and a few former Expos whom I particularly liked. Everything else I sorted into cards I would sell as singles (anything worth more than a quarter) and cards I would package in a team lot (20 cards of your favourite team for a low low price of…). It took quite a long time, but when I was finally finished, I had about $2,000 worth of cards and sports memorabilia (according to Beckett price guides). I packed everything up and brought it to a Flea market, and took in around $100.
It inspired me to take my business idea even more seriously (the ambition part). I bought more and more stuff to sell, so that I spent the money I took in and a little more, in an effort to try and make it self sustaining.
Minako raised wise objections several times to my spending. I was takings risks when I didn’t need to, I should wait and be patient, wait until I actually MAKE some money before I spend it. She has been very helpful at tempering my reckless enthusiasm with some practicality, but the understanding is only now setting in.
See, I eventually wanted to move into sport memorabilia from outside North America. Hockey was where I would start, since there is a growing interest in European Hockey cards. People want Euro cards featuring players from the NHL who played there during the strike. I spent hours and hours searching the internet for suppliers of hockey cards from Russia, Sweden, Germany, the Czech Republic and Switzerland, and I found sources for almost all of them. All I needed was the money.
Last weekend, I sat my Grandparents down and asked them to invest $2000 in my business. I had already calculated how I would spend it before I asked (this many wax boxes from Sweden, this many from Germany, this many sets from Russia, etc.) But they declined, for the time being anyway. They said they’d let me know.
It deflated my balloon a little bit, but it made me think about why I wanted to do this in the first place. It certainly isn’t going to make me a lot of money. If it is self-sustaining, I’ll be happy. It is a lot of fun, tracking things down, and it’s exciting taking a risk of certain cards, hoping they will sell for more than what I paid for them (Minako says this is like gambling, but I think it’s more like the stock market…)
But it’s also about pride. I want to be the guy that find the Swedish cards for a good price, the guy who finds the Mcfarlane chase figures hiding on a shelf at Walmart when no one else can, the guy people come to when they want to expand their collection of Jarmoir Jagr cards to include stuff from the Czech Republic and Russia. Pride.
And in my pursuit of pride, my apartment-cleaning project has suffered, my writing has suffered, and possibly my correspondence has suffered as well. I spend too much time looking at things to buy, searching for distributors, trying to figure out how to put a web site together, and drooling over my wonderful plans.
Really, this is supposed to be my hobby. The thing I do during my free time, when I’m not doing the more important stuff (like writing, cleaning, and corresponding).
So I’ve scaled my plans back a little. Instead of trying to launch a marvelous website in the next few months, I’m selling stuff on Ebay (visit my Ebay Store and get 10% off by mentioning my blog!!!!) and scaling back my massive purchasing plan. I have contacts at least in those European countries right?
So even though the window of interest is closing (NHL players won’t be playing in Europe next year since the strike is over) I think I can still creep my way to making a go of it.
And in the meantime, I’ll spend more time on my novel.
What spurred me on now was a combination of organizing and ambition.
My cards were in complete disarray. One shelving unit filled with boxes and binders of cards. So I set upon the task of organizing them. I wanted to keep my Expos cards (still collecting them) some rookies which might be more valuable later, and a few former Expos whom I particularly liked. Everything else I sorted into cards I would sell as singles (anything worth more than a quarter) and cards I would package in a team lot (20 cards of your favourite team for a low low price of…). It took quite a long time, but when I was finally finished, I had about $2,000 worth of cards and sports memorabilia (according to Beckett price guides). I packed everything up and brought it to a Flea market, and took in around $100.
It inspired me to take my business idea even more seriously (the ambition part). I bought more and more stuff to sell, so that I spent the money I took in and a little more, in an effort to try and make it self sustaining.
Minako raised wise objections several times to my spending. I was takings risks when I didn’t need to, I should wait and be patient, wait until I actually MAKE some money before I spend it. She has been very helpful at tempering my reckless enthusiasm with some practicality, but the understanding is only now setting in.
See, I eventually wanted to move into sport memorabilia from outside North America. Hockey was where I would start, since there is a growing interest in European Hockey cards. People want Euro cards featuring players from the NHL who played there during the strike. I spent hours and hours searching the internet for suppliers of hockey cards from Russia, Sweden, Germany, the Czech Republic and Switzerland, and I found sources for almost all of them. All I needed was the money.
Last weekend, I sat my Grandparents down and asked them to invest $2000 in my business. I had already calculated how I would spend it before I asked (this many wax boxes from Sweden, this many from Germany, this many sets from Russia, etc.) But they declined, for the time being anyway. They said they’d let me know.
It deflated my balloon a little bit, but it made me think about why I wanted to do this in the first place. It certainly isn’t going to make me a lot of money. If it is self-sustaining, I’ll be happy. It is a lot of fun, tracking things down, and it’s exciting taking a risk of certain cards, hoping they will sell for more than what I paid for them (Minako says this is like gambling, but I think it’s more like the stock market…)
But it’s also about pride. I want to be the guy that find the Swedish cards for a good price, the guy who finds the Mcfarlane chase figures hiding on a shelf at Walmart when no one else can, the guy people come to when they want to expand their collection of Jarmoir Jagr cards to include stuff from the Czech Republic and Russia. Pride.
And in my pursuit of pride, my apartment-cleaning project has suffered, my writing has suffered, and possibly my correspondence has suffered as well. I spend too much time looking at things to buy, searching for distributors, trying to figure out how to put a web site together, and drooling over my wonderful plans.
Really, this is supposed to be my hobby. The thing I do during my free time, when I’m not doing the more important stuff (like writing, cleaning, and corresponding).
So I’ve scaled my plans back a little. Instead of trying to launch a marvelous website in the next few months, I’m selling stuff on Ebay (visit my Ebay Store and get 10% off by mentioning my blog!!!!) and scaling back my massive purchasing plan. I have contacts at least in those European countries right?
So even though the window of interest is closing (NHL players won’t be playing in Europe next year since the strike is over) I think I can still creep my way to making a go of it.
And in the meantime, I’ll spend more time on my novel.
posted by deadwriter at 10:30 a.m.
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