Either a mistake, or a world record
 

Almost 250,000 listings.
http://www.ebay.com/sch/m.html?item=..._cards&_sop=16

Several records
 

Most listings.

Most listings all overpriced.

Most listing at one time that will not sell.

I was going to snipe and/or hit BIN on all 246,990 lots before you outed them. Thanks a lot, Peter.

Bargains galore to be had, I did not want to keep the knowledge to myself.

I just wonder how many people they have creating listings and how long that took to upload.

DJ

Fascinating thread idea, Peter.

Another winner? :rolleyes:

You leave me no choice but to bring back the Woof last directed at Wonka.

At 30 cents a listing that comes out to $74,092.80 for listing fees. :eek:

Mayhap they take advantage of free listing days.:)

His average completed sale seems to be about $3.

Here's a time-lapse video of his operations (for real!):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pkjCWzhpNg

Kind of scary. I'm trying to figure out where the dog ranks in terms of employee effectiveness.

Friggin' nuts

Almost 250k listings, but less than 10k feedback reported. I would assume that ratio of more than 25 to 1 has to be a record at least.

Did a search of sold items with highest price first and he sells a large number of high dollar sets and individual cards. I don't think he is hurting and is turning over a good amount of inventory.

Business Plans
 

This reminds me of all the threads that used to appear monthly on CU wondering how in the world Levi Bleam stayed in business with his "crazy" prices. With Levi I always thought there might be magic in his top hat.

It helps when Levi charges a few $ for shipping then you get your card in a PWE. By card I mean just card no top loader just the card in a PWE. Can't comment on Dean's as I have never bought anything from them.

Exactly, looks like he sells 750 items or so a month and if he is getting premium pricing my guess is he has a very profitable business.

Listings cost $.05 each per 30 days with an anchor store. $12,500 a month to maintain that inventory.

It's almost hard to imagine listing that many items....

Whats harder to imagine is who pays his prices.

I need to chat with this guy about business model. Whatever he's doing it seems to be working...no matter how much complaining about his prices goes on.

http://www.deanscards.com/about-us

Dean's Cards was founded in 2001 by Dean Hanley, a fellow card collector, and has become the leading online seller of sports cards and magazines. DeansCards.com buys hundreds of sports card collections each year, and has over one million cards online. Our 5,000 sq foot office is located in Cincinnati, Ohio and we have ten full-time employees.

Our goal at Dean's Cards is to provide our customers with a simple, cost effective and enjoyable way to build their collections. We have the largest online selection of baseball, football, basketball, hockey, and non-sports cards ranging in years from 1887 to the present. We also offer thousands of issues of Sports Illustrated, Sport Magazine, Baseball and Football Digest as well as vintage team yearbooks and media guides.

We are told by customers, that our Customer Service is the best in the hobby. Most orders ship within one business day and we are the only store in the hobby (that we are aware of) to be validated as a Google Trusted Store. We are NOT a physical retail store that people can visit, so we were able to focus our efforts on designing and stocking a website that provides the best collecting experience possible.

If you will give us the opportunity to earn your business, you will be glad that you did. We guarantee it. We love this hobby and work very hard to insure that orders are shipped 100% correct, mailed within one business day and that the items sent are conservatively graded. If you are not happy for any reason, you may return your order for a full refund.

I sold a t206 Eddie Collins two years ago on eBay and the buyer turned out to be Dean's Cards. I think I got about $75 for it which I was thrilled with because it was a SGC 10 with paper loss. They immediately listed it for $180. It is still listed two+ years later for $180.

But if it is only .05 a month over 24 months that has only cost $1.20 to keep it up. Someday, someone will buy it.

PLUS the cost of money..money isn't free..people often forget that. Money tied up in inventory is money that can't be invested elsewhere. He could have made 15-20% on that $75 over the past two years. If you have a lot of money tied up in sitting inventory, it really adds up.

Oh my God, I can't stop laughing!!!! This blight on the collecting society actually uses the words "cost effective" in their dumb*ss promotional piece??????

I don't know about that. The cost of money is usually measured in terms of the risk-free rate of return, i.e. U.S. Treasury bonds, which have been yielding around 2% annualized over the past couple of years, or about 4% in this case.

That's true, but I assume that Dean Hanley is making it work somehow, given that he has 10 full-time employees and a million cards in his inventory. Somebody earlier in this thread looked at his eBay sold listings, but he also sells a lot of cards directly through his web site, and I'm guessing that's quite a bit more than he sells through eBay.

I have to admit that I bought some cards through his web site about 10 years ago, 1970 and 1971 Topps commons when I was working on those sets. Convenience was the main attraction -- he had multiple copies of every card listed on his web site in various conditions, and they did arrive quickly. While his prices weren't exactly rock-bottom, they didn't seem overly exorbitant from my perspective, and avoiding the hassle of tracking down each card individually was worth something. I can't imagine ever buying a T206 or Old Judge from him at the prices he charges, but he has a lot of cards (1,364 T206s and 334 T205s, according to his web site), and I suppose there are just enough people who don't know any better and have money to burn.

Deans
 

When I have bought from them the service has been very good. And since I like to collect variant cards to go with my sets, the fact they show both the front and backs of a lot of cards is a plus. If the price is too high I just pass. No big deal

Trdcrdkid, I also assume Dean is making very good money with his business model, so I won't criticize his business. My only point is that money sitting around has a cost - it's called Opportunity Cost. What that $75 could have made if not tied up in inventory sitting for two years. It's what every business needs to consider, and I am sure Dean manages it well else he wouldn't be in business.

Simple example...you buy a house (tiny) for $100K and pay a monthly mortgage similar to the amount to rent another home. After ten years you sell the house for $150K and think you made a good investment because it made 50%...BUT if you had invested that $100K it probably would have doubled over the same ten year period.

Collectors need to consider this too when they think they are "investing" with their collection.

The general point is correct, but I don't like the example. If you're spending the same money on rent you're not really investing it. If you lived homeless for those ten years and played the stock market with the savings, then you're using your head.

Fair point glenn, maybe not best example, but you get my point. In reality the different alternatives with opportunity cost are never as simple, since so many factors can come into play.

Money & Time
 

"I hope when I die people will be able to say of me, 'Boy, that guy owed me a lot of money' ".....Jack Handey

There is always a time value of money that is used. That being said I don't think Dean's is hurting by the looks of their operations. Most of the times, in the vintage space, if you buy right and hold for x yrs you will do ok. As to Deans they look like they go with the massive amount approach and only a tiny percentage of their items selling is still ok.....as a tiny percentage of a huge number might not be too bad.

When I decided after 20+ years to finish my Hank Aaron collection, I didn't have an eBay acct, didn't care about prices (!), wasn't expecting to make it to a show, didn't know about N54, and wanted to get everything in one place.

It didn't take long for Dean's to come up in my search, and I was able to get everything I needed. In retrospect, I now know I could have spent about 25-50% less, depending how patient I was willing to be. Still, no regrets. The purchase made me very happy at the time.

Nowadays, I'm a bit more connected. Still, I can believe there are a ton of guys like the old me...not die-hards but nostalgic for some old cardboard. Evidently!

if it's Cecil, I admire your avatar
 

and dean sells raw vg T206 commons for $100 or more and usually has some ridiculous autobiography attached to his listings. An ego almost the size of the murderer "Dr." Palmer