Sports Card Strategy Show

My son Max and I went to visit Chris at Nash Cards in Mt. Juliet, TN after the Nashville Card Show on July 10, 2021.  It had been nearly 30 years since my last visit to a Local Card Shop.  Much like my trip to the Nashville Card Show, I had ZERO expectations of Nash Cards. I mean, I had heard GREAT things about Chris and his team from different podcasts and people at the Nashville Card Show.  When I met Chris, he lived up to the hype. After I had my head in a $0.25 box of Bowman Chrome Prospects cards for about 15 minutes, Chris complimented my "Topps" t-shirt I was wearing and we immediately hit it off.  I explained that Max and I were in town from Spain, and looking to have fun and possibly trade.  My strategy was to introduce him to some La Liga cards that he had never seen before.  He was super patient with me and allowed me to teach him about some of the Messi and Ronaldo cards I brought with me.

Here are our top five takeaways from the July 2021 Nashville Card Show: Full blog here - https://nooffseason.com/the-top-5-tak... 1. People are helpful and open-minded.   2. Card Shows are more valuable business lessons than school.  3. Negotiate, negotiate, negotiate.   4. Be weary of price stickers.   5. SGC Could Be King.   The hobby is alive and well. We saw people invigorated by sports cards. We thought there might be 20-30 people at Lighthouse Christian School in Antioch. Instead, there were ~150-200 all day long, and many kids.  A big shout out to Tri-Star Cards. Two young teenagers and their dad had a very well organized, size-able collection ranging from a $0.50 box all the way up to $1k+ slabs and a Panini Noir Basketball break they were selling slots for.  These young men were not only impressive from a card collection standpoint, but clearly were honorable young businessmen, talking to Max and I for a long time, sharing their story, discounting their cards for us, and even dropping me a free Cassius Winston rookie card since I'm a huge Michigan State fan.  Everyone was interested in a free pack of Panini Megacracks Soccer from Spain (La Liga) and was willing to learn who to collect from that set from Max and I.  The amount of currently untraceable transactions at card shows are a sign that eBay is far from the only place that cards are changing hands, which is amazing for the hobby and the business of the hobby moving forward.  The Nashville Card Show is free to attend, is typically twice a month and I highly recommend it. For more information on the Nashville Card Show, following them on Twitter at @nashcardshow.  Please email me at paul@datadriven.design if you have any questions about our experience at the Nashville Card Show.  This blog is brought to you by MarketMoversApp.com by Sports Card Investor. Use the promo code "nooffseason" to save 20% on your Market Movers subscription or click here - https://www.sportscardinvestor.com/pl...

Today's blog / video is sponsored by Cardscore.com. Cardscore solves a huge problem in the sports card industry today - grading. Grading is expensive from both a time and money standpoint, and can easily drain your resources and shrink your profit margin. There is really no way, other than StarStock, to differentiate ungraded / unslabbed card values against one another. Cardscore is a crowdsourced way of assigning a score from 0-100 to any card.

I made a Facebook post the other day - ironically NOT about my book "What To Do After You Find Your Old Sports Card Collection," and a Facebook friend commented about needing help after finding his old baseball card collection.  https://nooffseason.com/book Long story short, as explained in further detail in the video, he has all of the sets from 1979 - 1989 that he collected (so they're not factory sealed), of Topps Baseball, as well as some years during that timeframe of Fleer, Donruss, O-Pee-Chee and more.   He basically wants to sell them as quickly as possible, but wants to maximize profits.  This video walks not only him, but all of you through my methodology for doing this in any situation you might find yourself in with your vintage sports cards.

StarStock solves three huge problems for the sports card hobby and market overall. Since I wrote my book in April 2021, the largest card grading companies PSA and BGS have shutdown their economy services and aren't accepting any new submissions until further notice.

I've been absolutely roasted in some Facebook Groups but owning non-rookie base cards that are PSA 10s.  The haters say things like...  "How dare someone ever get a non-rookie card graded?" "That's the reason why the backlog is so long" "I hope your entire card collection goes up in flames because you are the reason why the hobby sucks now!"  You think I'm exaggerating? Go join a Facebook Group or Subreddit as ask a question. See how "friendly," people are. :)  Anyway, I re-entered the hobby this year with the strong belief that as an adult... (enter Mike Gundy "I'm a man... I'm 40!" yelling here) ... we can all do what we want to make us happy.  It is after all, a hobby.  So, get whatever cards you want graded. Be positive, spread joy, etc.  Now, with that disclaimer out of the way, I can talk about two cards that I acquired over the last year, and am now selling at https://nooffseason.com.

Major League Baseball sensation Shohei Ohtani is doing what less than five players in the history of the game have ever done - put up all-star numbers as both a starting pitcher and a slugger at the plate.  As of this recording, he leads the MLB in home runs with 23, is third in RBI with 54, and is batting .272, and has 10 stolen bases.  Oh, and as a regular starting pitcher in the L.A. Angels rotation he is 3-1 with a 2.70 ERA and more than 70 strikeouts.  And so rightfully so, his rookie card values have skyrocketed this baseball season.  So then why the heck am I LOWERING the price of all of my Ohtani PSA 10 rookie cards?  Simple:  1. I'm not a greedy seller  2. I want to provide opportunities for all collectors and investors to have some profit margin to flip after they buy  3. I'm trying to build a solid community of collectors that join https://NoOffseason.com

If you've been hold Vlad Guerrero Jr. PSA 10 rookie cards for the last few years, you're super happy right now, as his prices are back at an all-time high.  So why the heck am I LOWERING my price on my Vlad Jr. 2018 Topps Chrome PSA 10 rookie card?

While other people and content creators in the hobby are concerned with word vomiting out their "takes" on "the state of the sports card market," and click baity topics like "crash vs. correction" and pontificating on alternative investments, I'm focused on one thing and one thing only...  giving you the opportunity to buy the cards you want at the lowest possible prices.  I'm not trying to be greedy on an individual per card basis. I'd rather take a haircut on some cards to build a community of happy collectors and investors.  I also want to make it easy and efficient for you to get your cards. I can't tell you how many Facebook Groups I've been in that talk about horror stories related to eBay and even PWCC Marketplace.  Come to https://NoOffseason.com/Join and join our community. For $19.99 a month, you get a coupon code for $19.99 (so it's basically a free membership), free shipping on all orders, the ability to notify us directly of a better Buy It Now price that we will beat, and a free graded card at the end of the year.

I just got back into the hobby this year after a 30 year hiatus, and a wrote a book about my experience re-acclimating myself and learning about sports card collecting again. This podcast is a modified snippet from my book - What To Do After You Find Your Old Sports Card Collection, available at https://nooffseason.com/book.