Possibly opening a shop??

MichaelBailey61194

Bench Warmer
A friend of mine and myself have been seriously considering opening a card/memorabilia shop after we get out of college. Does anyone run or own their own store? I am looking for any and every piece of feedback from distributors to what products to carry. This is nothing more than just talks about it but we both love the hobby and want to see it grow. I read all about how hard it is, but I want to hear from people that have done it!

Thanks!
 
I am in the process of opening one myself. It is much harder than I expected. Even with a brick and mortar, most of the card companies require you to purchase from a distributor for a year before you can buy direct. This cuts you profits to almost nothing. In todays collecting economy, you HAVE to rely on online activity to make any kind of profit. In store profits are just a bonus if and when they happen.

That being said, buy your stock in bulk! Supplies and boxes by the case. You will get a decent discount buying by the case that will allow you some profit margin while still being competitive. Also, you almost have to expand your stock to Non-Sports and other collectibles to make it. You have to have enough interest from different collection groups to bring in the business. Good luck with the shop! When you get to that point, I can get you in touch with a few distributors.
 
Hus
I am in the process of opening one myself. It is much harder than I expected. Even with a brick and mortar, most of the card companies require you to purchase from a distributor for a year before you can buy direct. This cuts you profits to almost nothing. In todays collecting economy, you HAVE to rely on online activity to make any kind of profit. In store profits are just a bonus if and when they happen.

That being said, buy your stock in bulk! Supplies and boxes by the case. You will get a decent discount buying by the case that will allow you some profit margin while still being competitive. Also, you almost have to expand your stock to Non-Sports and other collectibles to make it. You have to have enough interest from different collection groups to bring in the business. Good luck with the shop! When you get to that point, I can get you in touch with a few distributors.
just curious how long have you planned it out before you pulled the trigger to make it happen?
 
ummm 12 years? I have helped / co ran a couple of shops. Now its just down to getting the money together. Unless you have quite a bit of money to drop into it, its hard to do. Right now I am doing just online orders. Soon I will have my brick and mortar though
 
ummm 12 years? I have helped / co ran a couple of shops. Now its just down to getting the money together. Unless you have quite a bit of money to drop into it, its hard to do. Right now I am doing just online orders. Soon I will have my brick and mortar though
That's awesome. Do you have a website? I'd love to check it out if you do! I hope your store once open does well. One more question and I will stop asking, roughly what's a good price for start up cost?
 
from a financial aspect, I don't see much upside to having a shop...back in the 80s through mid 90s there were a ton of shops throughout the area (at one point there were 2 in the neighboring town of 5000 people), and you could get packs at several locations (I lived in a town of 1200 people), and there were a variety of packs, especially early/mid 90s, now packs aren't easy to find, unless you want searched stuff or topps retail...

I don't buy single packs ever, just by the box or by the case, because there are so many hit pack sellers and people weighing packs, I don't even trust shops these days...sure, back in the 80s and 90s, you would get the cello or rack pack that had the guy you wanted showing on the front or back, but that isn't really 'searching' like they do these days...

you are also competing with online sellers who don't have the overhead, so unless you are selling VINTAGE stuff from the 60s or older where condition makes hundreds of dollars difference and you wont get top money for the card on an eBay or such site, or are selling knock off jerseys that you can get from China for $10 and sell for $40, it isn't really worth it I wouldn't think...

I drive around 40 miles to go to a shop, and the only thing I really buy there is storage boxes because places like blowout and dacw no longer sell them...

ive had people tell me I could open a shop, and I probably could with the volume of cards I have, but its a losing venture, so unless you are running it out of your home or already own vacant retail space and want to have it open on weekends or after you get off work from a real job I couldn't imagine doing it...

look at eBay, you can get say 40 autographs for $50 shipped - to resell in a shop, you probably need to get $150 out of them to even think about profit, but how long is it going to take you to move 40 common autographs? on eBay as a decent seller in good status, they give out free listings all the time, so at 20% markup you start making money, so anything over $1.50 per card average I can make something off of the cards, but with rent, utilities, insurance on stock, and potentially an employee or two, you likely have to charge $3+ per card that to break even...

since you have to buy in bulk to save money, how long are you going to be sitting on a 'dead' product. when regular topps baseball comes out, it costs what $50 a box give or take? so you buy say 4 cases to get a discount, but there isn't a ton of love for the product, so you sell 6 boxes the first month, leaving you with 3 1/2 cases and the next product releases, now the topps that you paid maybe $35 for and sold a few at $50 are selling online for $30 and people have moved on...

I see it when any product releases, in football, it was Press Pass that would have the first college cards so people would flock to it, then Prestige would come and no one wanted Press Pass, then Elite and no one cared about Prestige and it just continues...now if there isn't a 'stud' in the product you cant give it away...at the 2007 National, before Aaron Rodgers got the starting gig, boxes of Bowman Chrome football could be had for like $22 a box, no joke, then by 2010 Rodgers is established, those boxes go for what $50-$75 or so? so now they are worth what it likely cost to buy them originally...

I look at my Topps Olympic love...I bought 1 Hobby Box when the price dropped to $50 (initially retailed for $79+), I just bought 3 cases for under $24 a box, and that is in under a year. It originally released in November/December 2013 and 15 months later it has lost 60%+ of its value...

then if you look at the singles market, get caught holding the bag on a guy that gets injured/arrested...as a shop, you need to have some high end stuff, Ray Rice, Adrian Peterson huge drops in the market this year, when Jeremy Lin got hurt his National Treasures went from $15,000+ to $5000 in about 2 weeks, because it takes time for the market to adjust, can you take multiple hits like that? Its not like you dropped $20 a card into some Caleb Hanie cards that are a buck, you lost $10,000 overnight...

I play the risk/reward game, low risk, high reward, peddling 'junk' singles online...
 
Most LCS you go to now have other non cards listed like games, comics, magic cards, clothing, misc items as that's what they will make their money on. With Ebay and other internet sites there is no way to buy and sell cards to make any profit off them unless you buy cases in huge amounts to get a large discount. Then you need to hope you can move them to get your money back before you think about a profit. Opening a business is hard work. Most fail within their first year of startup. Need a good business plan and know that you will have a market for your business were you plan to open.
 
Back
Top