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View Full Version : Some interesting observations in junk wax marketing and trends


Classic Wax Cards
11-02-2016, 09:26 AM
I'm an online affiliate marketer. I have many sites, pages, and other entities online that are designed to generate money based on volumes of traffic clicking on, or committing certain actions from with in these various places online.

My biggest projects involve things that I am very interested in personally. It helps to keep me committed and interested and makes it less like work and more like a hobby.

My newest project is a website focusing on junk wax baseball cards (not trying to plug my site here, but it is necessary to mention it in this instance). I promote this site though several means and various social networks.

One of the ways of promoting this particular site, was to create a Pinterest account. For those not familiar, Pinterest is a social network where you have a home page. You create categories (boards) on this page. In the boards, you post (pin) pictures from around the web. Other users can find your pins through either following you, or keyword searches in Pinterest. People can like, or share (repin) your content. A pretty typical platform.

Ive created (am creating) a board for each of the sets im working with. Each board will have the top 30ish cards in it for the set. Every board and pin is set up the same way. The board is titled with the sets year, brand, and term "baseball cards." Each pin in the board is titled with the year, brand, player, and again the term "baseball card."

heres where it gets interesting... Because I'm using exactly the same formatting and photography for each board and pin, all the pins and boards should be considered equal to start with. Its up to the other users to determine what pins stand out.

I currently have a board for 1986 Topps (the 33 top cards of the set.) 1986 Donruss (the top 32 cards of the set.) And 1987 Topps (21 of the top cards, still in progress.) Other sets/cards will follow.

In doing this, I've been able to see some interesting trends within Pinterest. Basically, I can see what sets/cards are hit upon the most from people doing keyword searches. The results are pretty interesting.

Generally speaking, most of the cards have not been touched. Nobody's done anything with them. Others have taken off completely unexpected. Here's some examples...

In the 1986 Topps series, a few of the cards get just a couple likes/shares. But whats very interesting is what cards get the most. The Darren Daulton card has 4. The Pete Rose player card has 5. The Rickey Henderson All Star card has 9. The Pete Rose MGR card has 16. The 86 Topps Reggie Jackson card has 27! Cards in the set that have none are all the other top cards including the Roger Clemens, Nolan Ryan, 2 Cal Ripkens, 2 George Bretts, and the Mattingly among others.

In the 1986 Donruss board, we again see most of the top cards with no likes or shares. And again several cards have a couple. This time, the cards with the most are Nolan Ryan with 5, Tom Seaver with 6, and the good ol Jose Canseco with 8.

In the 87 Topps board, again most have no likes/shares or just a couple. Then we see Cal Ripken with 4, and Barry Bonds with 6. The other top cards like the McGwire and the Bo have just 2 each, same as Doug Drabek and Devon White.

I find it really interesting that of all the great cards in those 3 sets, the 86 Reggie Jackson vastly dominates. I also find it very interesting that a player may be popular in 1 year/brand and not the other, such as Pete Rose and Nolan Ryan.

Not that any of this means anything, as there are a few variables im sure, but I still think it's pretty interesting from a marketing/analytic point of view.

Just thought I'd share.

and now I'm off to promote eBay auctions for psa 9-10 1986 Reggie Jackson cards and collect the commissions lol :-)

JTysver
11-02-2016, 11:41 AM
Not sure the sample size is large enough to tell.
Are these unique users? Are the searches well defined?

Perhaps the Reggie fan was simply just an Angels fan or some 1986 Angels fans? Perhaps someone simply types in Topps Reggie Jackson and it brings up the 86 Topps Reggie.
I know it tells something, but not sure if it tells much yet. I would think the 86 youngsters (Gwynn, Puckett, Clemens, Bonds etc.) would be more of interest in the long run.

Classic Wax Cards
11-02-2016, 03:01 PM
There definatelty needs to be more data to form better analytics. The users can find the pin from searching Reggie jackson, 1986 topps, or anything else that is represented in the keywords I used. What I find interesting is no matter how they find it (pinterest uses an unknown search algorithm like facebook or google) they did search something relevant to that card. 27 times over. Almost double to the next most popular of my posted cards. For a marketer like me, that info is $.

Tripredacus
11-03-2016, 01:51 PM
Junk era wax is definately up from the past 5-10 years. Almost double in some cases. It is still cheap in some cases, but there was a time where you couldn't give away a 1989 Topps wax and now they are actually selling.

Classic Wax Cards
11-04-2016, 10:54 AM
I see that too. I think it has a little to do with the collectors who were kids in the 80s era that are now in their 30s-40s and have reached point in their life where they are stable enough to have hobbies or a little extra expendable money, and want a piece of their childhood back to offset the midlife crisis, yet cant afford a corvette or a 23 year old girlfriend. At least thats how it is for me. Im collecting all the cards now that were sooo big back then, that I couldnt afford. I can buy them all day now for cheap. Its good for the industry too.

Exhibitman
11-13-2016, 07:25 AM
That's a good point Eric. I've been buying cards from the 1990s that I wanted and that are soooo friggin cheap now. Really beautiful cards of HOFers for next to nothing. With so little money involved it is a pure exercise in amusement.

AGuinness
11-18-2016, 10:13 AM
I find it really interesting that of all the great cards in those 3 sets, the 86 Reggie Jackson vastly dominates. I also find it very interesting that a player may be popular in 1 year/brand and not the other, such as Pete Rose and Nolan Ryan.

I'm very interested in this type of analytics, although one of the first thoughts I had was can you tease out interest/hits/pins on the baseball player Reggie Jackson versus the basketball player Reggie Jackson? It seems to me there might be an issue, particularly with small samples, when somebody searching for the basketball player stumbles across the baseball player and clicks out of sheer curiosity rather than intent.

Not sure how many other examples of shared names in different sports there are, so this might not be too difficult to figure out.