When you buy for resell, what percentage do you try to buy at?

[jchcollins]

Are you supposed to actually sell cards for more than you paid for them? LOL. I seem to barely stay afloat lately just selling covering PC purchases I should have stayed away from in the first place.

Oy, maybe 2025 will bring new hope.

[wdwfan]

Yes, there's tons of flippers in this hobby, especially when it comes to modern cards. Can't tell you how many times I've heard someone at the Dallas Show say ... "well I've got to get this for it because I paid this for it." Too many flippers.

Originally Posted by jchcollins

Are you supposed to actually sell cards for more than you paid for them? LOL. I seem to barely stay afloat lately just selling covering PC purchases I should have stayed away from in the first place.

Oy, maybe 2025 will bring new hope.

[swarmee]

Since I'm a regular flipper on COMC, I really don't buy anything I don't expect to sell for at least double. If I'm grading it myself, I expect the grading value to increase the cards value by at least triple the grading fee. $20 fee means card value has to grow at least $60 as a result.

[bnorth]

It varies greatly by the value of the card and how easy it is to resell. I have paid 90% before and turned down cards at 10% of value for reselling.

In general the cheaper the card the lower the percentage paid. The easier it is to sell the higher the percentage of value paid.

[raulus]

Originally Posted by bnorth

It varies greatly by the value of the card and how easy it is to resell. I have paid 90% before and turned down cards at 10% of value for reselling.

In general the cheaper the card the lower the percentage paid. The easier it is to sell the higher the percentage of value paid.

I'll vote for this answer.

For the most part, if I'm buying something with an eye towards selling it in the not too distant future, I'm probably buying oddball stuff that is hard to move. But I usually feel like I get it for a screaming deal, so I'm okay sitting on it for a while, until I can find the right buyer.

A few examples come to mind, just because we're having fun here.

A few years ago, I purchased a complete set of the 1968 Bazooka Complete Boxes, all graded and ready to go. Kept a couple for my PC, since they had my favorite players. Put the rest on eBay.

Immediately sold the Mantle piece, for an amount that equaled 100% of my cost to buy the complete set. I've been very slowly working to sell the rest. Most of them are still for sale, and could continue to sit. It's a thin market, and it probably doesn't help that I'm asking museum prices, but it's worked out just fine for me so far. My guess is that I'll end up with triple my original investment, maybe more if I ever sell off my PC pieces.

A few years ago, I purchased a complete set (minus the Mantle) of 1969 Globe Imports Checkerboard Back cards. Paid $500 for the set in raw form, and turned around and got them all graded for $20 apiece.

Since I already had one that was higher graded, I sold off the Mays for $3,000. Sold another one to a player collector on this board for $1,000. And I've been slowly selling off the rest, including some recent price reductions, which have helped to move them a lot faster. So far, my total sales are probably around $7,500. I'm guessing that I'll probably end up with around $15k in sales by the time I sell the last one off.

[darkhorse9]

Lately, when I walk through card shows and see the dealers (and buyers) who are clearly speculators with only the latest issues, rookies and autographs in their possession I think to myself, "yep, they'll be out of the hobby completely in three years."

[Rich Klein]

The "right" answer is,, what are you comfortable with?'

You can work on a tighter margin if you know/have a good understanding of how quickly you can sell an item than if you think you are going to hold it for a while

Coin dealers made a lot of money over the years buying deals on literally a 5 percent markup or less.

One secret to Alan Rosen's success was he was more of a "Flipper" and worked on a smaller margin than most of us were comfortable with.

We may talk about this on a future Dr. Beckett podcast but to give you an hint: I had a small group of 17 cards I purchased from a $1 box last weekend.

This was the result and understand these prices will be at the next show I set up at

so I got home this afternoon and decided using the OPG and COMC for those 2 cards not in the OPG to price what I had purchased

The results are -- all $5-8 cards I priced at $5 for my selling purposes

$1 3 Cards
$3 1 Card
$5 10 cards
$10 3 cards

This is a 5X BTW $86 of asking price for $17 cost

Not too bad. Also, sometimes I will do the break even to get a card into my inventory I kind of sort of like.

Rich