making a living selling cards

jswieton · June 26, 2008 10:34AM

I was just curious if anyone makes a living full time buying and selling cards (75k+ per year). It just seems with the internet it would seem very difficult to make any money consistantly selling cards. I guess if you knew what you were doing you could flip cards on ebay.

yankeeno7 · June 26, 2008 10:54AM

you could do it but you better have lots of time and LOTS of $$

JackWESQ · June 26, 2008 11:33AM

I'll echo yankeeno7 sentiments. $75,000.00 per year works out to $6,250.00 per month profit that you need to make. Of course, for every item, there will be ebay fees and, for sake of argument, I'll say paypal fees as well. The fees change depending on the final selling price, but I'll use a fee of 3.5% for sake of simplicity for both ebay and paypal fees. This means the $6,250.00 has now turned into $6,720.00.

Now to profit $6,720.00, I would imagine you need to sell $33,600.00 in cards per month. This assumes a 20% profit. But even if you could somehow turn a 50% profit, that would mean you selling $13,440.00 in cards per month. Spread that out to a year, you're looking at $161,280 to $403,200 in sales. That is a lot of cards to sell.

Of course, I'm assuming the $75,000.00 is pre state and federal income tax. If post, well ... And there's the issue of cost of doing business, e.g. gas, packaging materials, etc.

/s/ JackWESQ

yankeeno7 · June 26, 2008 11:35AM

At least you could write off all those costs

storm888 · June 26, 2008 11:38AM

It's pretty easy to make that and more buying/selling STUFF.

But, if you limit your buy/sell to cards, it would likely be VERY difficult.

Generalists do better than specialists.

JackWESQ · June 26, 2008 11:45AM

I have a friend who makes a pretty good living buying and selling cars. $10,000.00 baseball card? Somewhat difficult to find. $10,000.00 car, uh yeah ... Go get yourself a dealers license and stop by some auctions ...

/s/ JackWESQ

fkw · June 26, 2008 1:37PM

I make about $20K-25K a year and dont spend more than 2 hours a day. I think I can double that if I tried harder.

My website is a cheap homemade one, but I do have a couple hundred pages too, and it comes up in all kinds of searches.

I am a collector first, dealer second. Sometimes I hate selling some cards, but I dont make much $$ from my normal everyday routine (surfing, spear fishing, mango/papaya/lilikoi eating, and bikini watching when they actually wear them). At least my hobby is legal which is more than I can say for 75% of my neighbors who make a living growing pakalolo.

But I also sell/specialize in cards that are not seen too often on other sites or even eBay.

Rarer PreWar "type cards" are usually all I look for.

hofautos · June 26, 2008 2:51PM

next, you will want to know their secrets....lol...

jswieton · June 26, 2008 3:19PM

<< <i>next, you will want to know their secrets....lol... >>

No, no secrets. I was just currious. I think that is awsome if you can make money out of your hobby. The only thing that sucks is that often when your hobby becomes your job, it is no longer your hobby

.

Estil · June 27, 2008 6:33AM

And therein lies the danger of turning fun into work. And to make $75K profit a year on selling cards. Tough, TOUGH job. I'd love to someday open a card shop here (we have ZERO in this town) but I'm just not a risk taker (the most important thing you need to be a business person).

WinPitcher · June 27, 2008 7:19AM

Many people do it.

Steve

making a living selling cards

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