How to Fund Your Collection on a Limited Budget

my name is Jeff Wilson by day I invest in tech companies and at night I invest in sports parties join me on my journey to profit from the hobby we all love [Music] hello sports Gard investors and welcome to another episode today how to fund your collection on a limited budget if you want to get into collecting or investing cards but you only have a little bit of money to get started with this episode could give you some really good information a really good strategy that could prove to be successful and allow you to start to multiply the dollars in which you can build your collection with I'm excited to share that information with you today I am also excited that in today's episode we have two giveaways not one but two giveaways in today's episode so stay tuned for that so this topic today how to fund your collection on a limited budget this topic is something that people have written in and asked me to do a show about but one of my listeners actually wrote in with their own ideas their own story of how they successfully did this and they submitted an article to me through my article submission program on my website some of you may have read it in fact we had over 700 people read the article was a very very popular article put it up on my website about a week ago the gentleman's name was Chris fine and he wrote this article telling his personal story about a strategy that he used to fund his collection on a limited budget I thought it was a really great article and as it turns out it was the most popular article posted to my website last month so I decided to create a whole episode about his strategy and I'm gonna bring Chris on the show here in a couple of minutes and we're gonna hear more about his his strategy and his story and how he was able to start with a very small amount of money and build up some it's from some early cards that he bought and then used those profits to continue to grow and grow his collection and do that successfully so it's a great story with some interesting takeaways I'm excited to have Chris share that directly with you now I mentioned that Chris's article was the most popular article posted to my website sports card investor in the month of October but I had a lot of really good articles posted and as you know we started the article submission program where every month I'm giving 250 dollars away to whoever submitted the article that was the most popular article that month in terms of views and in terms of comments it was it was difficult and frankly a little painful for me to have to pick a winner because because I really liked a number of the articles and I wish that we could have had more than one winner but ultimately a winner has to be picked and it was Chris Pine in his article on how to fund your collection on a limited budget which we're gonna hear more about in just a minute when Chris comes on the show that won the prize for October won the $250 congratulations Chris for such a good article and for any of you out there who have an idea for an article that you might want to write and submit now is a great time to do it because we have a fresh 250 dollar prize we're gonna be giving away for the month of November to the most popular article how you can submit your article is to go to sports card investor comm and click on article submissions speaking of articles on the website there's a great new post I just put up today we we've got the big dogs writing articles for us now we have Brian Flynn Brian Flynn is a freelance writer for sports collector Digest and MLB marathon and Brian is a listener to the show and wanted to write an article and submitted an article today on resources you can use to evaluate baseball prospects so that is a new article it's on my website tonight go check it out resources you can use to evaluate baseball prospects good tips there if you're going to be trying to figure out you know prospect cards to up-and-coming players to buy you may find this article helpful some of the resources that Brian - in the article so go check that out okay before I get Chris on and we start the interview let me tell you about the first giveaway I know you guys are excited to give aways during today's show so the first giveaway as as many of you know you've heard me talk about in a past shows I have a discord chat server and the discord chat server has been awesome we now have I think about 700 people on the discord chat server constant talk about investing in all kinds of different sports cards it's a lot of fun one of the guys who is one of my moderators a guy who volunteered early on to be a moderator who has helped me grow the discord chat server his handle is eight one eight hype plug you may have seen him on there eight one eight hype plug he is doing he has started a YouTube channel with his younger brother called kids case brakes and they're trying to get their YouTube channel going and so he wanted to do a special giveaway for people who listen to sports cart investor and who want to check out his channel he's gonna do a special giveaway he's giving away a Dennis Santana rookie card autograph and a Caleb Ferguson rookie card autograph for checking out what he's doing the way that you enter the contest and get to what he's doing is there is a link in the show notes to this show so if you are watching on YouTube expand the description of the show where it says show more hit show more and it will show the whole description or the little down arrow so it expands the description and you will see a link to get to his contest or if you are listening on the podcast it's also in the show notes if you expand those in the podcast so you can get to his his contest and enter that the second giveaway that I'm giving away today I will tell you about right after this interview with Chris Pine let's not wait any longer for it let me bring Chris vine on the show to talk about how to fund your collection on a limited budget Chris welcome to sports card investor super excited to have you here and have everybody hear your story when you start by telling us a little bit about your story and about how you have found this really unique way to profit from junk wax well like a lot of people that are in the hobby now I started collecting when I was a kid as a young teenager and you know back then you're looking for you know the hot rookies for back then and of course Jordan because he was still playing and then I stepped away from the hobby for almost 20 years and I talked to a lot of people that they started out you know collecting when they were a kid and they jumped back in and then they they want to go back to this their their nineties stuff and be like hey what can I make from this stuff well it was the junk era so it's kind of hard so when I came back into the Hobby I started looking and I was like is any of the stuff that I have worth anything and you know the thing that that you can always sell is Jordan but I had to have a way of adding value to the individual cars I was kind of looking for a way to come back into the Hobby and be able to to show some profit to to be able to fund what I'm doing with with with the cars that I'm sending integrating so you got back into it but grating didn't exist when you were collecting the first time now grating existed so what what where did you see like oh goodness if I could find some cards from this vintage era and then you know actually grade them and submit them that I could get this multiple on the value of these of these cards from from the junk wax time yeah so when when I'm when I'm looking to to get back in basically you'd go to either a base sales because I'm already looking at my older stuff that's in binders to see hey what can I sell and you quickly learned that a lot of it you just can't sell even if you you know if you wanted to because there's so many of that card available but I did find you know you find the what's been sold on eBay look at your sold prices and I said well I don't have this car but how how quickly and cheaply can I get this card and it turned out that you know getting a 1990 FLIR box at that time you should pay 20 bucks the first box of a 40 second box I paid 20 and so you know you pull you know you get 6 7 8 car Jordans and I'm like okay well that's cool I had never graded before so having never graded before I didn't know how hard they were gonna be on my cards I didn't know all the ins and outs so that grade was horrible BJ just gave me a 5 free grades on a 10 day turnaround and I sent in a hoops Jordan from I think of 96 set and he got a 8.5 and then horribly and uh so I ended up selling those for like nothing of course you know the grade was free whatever and so then I realized you know I had as I started doing research I need something that has like borders so that I can see what the centering is like because I sent in a 92 Jordan with that first or where he's from stadium club when we're he's ducking on a Patrick Ewing but there's no border there's just it's just a car and it's harder to tell where the centering is and that's one of the biggest keys is the centering on your grading so moving on I looked at something like the 1990 FLIR Jordan and that has borders and also the little there's a red and blue line and you can line those up and see what you're you know what your centering is gonna look like and I just got very you know just I guess lucky you know second time I'm going to do a submission and learned a lot between the first submission and the next admission you can't at first I'm thinking I can just send this into BDS they'll stamp a 10 on it and I'm gonna make a profit it doesn't work like that at all and so definitely learned that there's there's a lot of technique involved and then you know about how much you want to invest to get those cards out there to the graders and so with the Jordan I found that it's you know it's cool to be first on the market with something you're not gonna be first on the market with Jordan like I'm I'm excited to see the first eye on PSA bgs show up but with Jordan you can kind of wait if it's a 65 day return time with PSA the only thing that's really going to change jordan is probably the amount of the jordan cards that are on ebay or that are in the market so and then you have to think about well am i saturating the market with this card and making less and less each time i sell it - yeah yeah so that's great great points about grading so i so the first time you submitted for grading you weren't you weren't really looking at those factors you know in terms of what actually makes it good grade but it sounds like not only not only did you learn what factors make a good grade through experience but you also learned to actually concentrate on on buying junk wax of sets where where you where it would be easier for you to figure out like what the centering of a card was because of the design of the set correct correct the design of the set the other ones that i was successful with too was a 1993-94 FLIR and i just went back to FLIR cuz I went to what I knew when I was a kid you know now basketball is like surely panini because of their exclusive contract so I went back to what I knew when I was a kid and in the 93 94 the base Jordan has some very defined white borders and that one you know it was selling at that time for around 40 ish and so you have to know where your cards are that you're looking for cuz I had to do research it's either say well how am I gonna pull the most Jordans so it's pretty inexpensive to buy some 93-94 FLIR and get quite a few bass Jordan cards and be able to flip those so if you're looking for a particular card you got to do some research and see well where is that card what set is it is series 1 back then there were series 1 and series - and there's the cell OFAC's and the wax packs and the different packs so you got to know where to look for the cards you're looking for and in the series 2 of 93-94 you start coming across inserts like the majority in living legends which a very high foil card that doesn't doesn't grade very well but even a nine will sell for quite a bit of money because i the the population on a 10 is very low and and also there's a sharpshooter michael jordan which i have a couple of those out right now being great and the last one of those this old EGS 9.5 sold for $89 wow that's cool so so knowing what sets to pick of junk wax based upon you know the particulars and what they would sell for in the resale market when graded helps direct you to what uncle actually right right correct yeah you can you can literally buy junk wax it is junk if you jump into the 90 the series one of 94 95 jordan was retired and so in the series one you won't see any jordan's in there so you'll just be and then no rookies either because it's series one so that's that's purely junk i mean if you've got some pc guys you want to pick up from there for some reason you can but you're not gonna make any money there right right talk to me about the economics of it a little bit so how are you buying the junk wax and and what are and how are you kind of figuring out like what I should pay versus what I could potentially get as a return if I pull some Jordans and are able to get it graded right so with with the 1990 it's it's bumped up a little bit like I said in the article I spent like forty on the first one and I was excited because I was just getting back in the Hobby oh and then later I'm like but I could have bought that for twenty dollars and you're talking about ninety Flair so this is a sealed max box of nine girlier uh nobody walks but what is like thirty six packs or something like that for tax in that one I think there's I think there's 36 packs in that yeah I think that might be a big one it's quite a rip you got it you've got to have some time to set aside and so looking at those now they're about 25 or 30 the back time they're about 20 but you know if you're gonna pull maybe four Jordans and possibly his his all-star car that's in there it it could be worth it but what I can tell you on the all-star card is those are very off-center I've seen very if you can get a good grade on an all-star from 1990 you'll make about 90 to 100 bucks okay that's and that's the other thing too you have to know there's some years where they just did bad cuts are so that on there was those are poorly you can look at the back of a 1990 FLIR all-star and just see that it's just totally off-center because they have these little stars at the bottom and you'll have like two stars on one side of the description of the player and one star on the other side so you kind of know is way off that's a good that's a good trick to look at that's an important lesson for people to learn that just because you're pulling a card fresh out of the pack right does not mean it's gem mint condition whatsoever at all that's even true for modern cards very true for modern cards and you could pull a card out of a prism or you know especially when you get into you know fancier cards like national treasures or flawless that's gonna have a patch in there that's gonna have an on card auto there's a lot of opportunity for that card to have some type of off centering or a little bit of surface imperfection during the printing itself even though you're pulling it fresh out of the pack immediately putting it into a protective case that card may not be a 10 it may not be anywhere close to a 10 I pulled a card the other day out of a pack of flawless brand-new right out of the pack and sent it off for grading it got an 8.5 and it was right it was right out of the pack brand-new I probably should have known better than to send off a card I I didn't expect it to get a but I expected to get a nine and got an eight five which I was disappointed by but the cards can have imperfections and especially when you're dealing with vintage which is what you're talking about that in those cards as you as you're saying the centering can be a real real problem and the centering makes a huge difference when it comes to grading cards right and when they were were printing out these cards I mean just by the droves you know it's probably a little bit less quality control going on back then but you can still see today you can look at a prism card and be like this is like not even 60 40 is like 70/30 on centering let's just look horrible and so that that too when you're looking to maybe buy a single card you know take a look at the front take a look at the back and you know because you know that you'll get dinged real hard if you're trying to be a flipper or flip card just you know not definitely not worth the investment right so your strategy has been specific to Jordan carts have you tried to strategy with any other eye you know Hall of Fame or old player or have you stuck with Jordan so when I first got back in you know Jordan has the most the least fluctuation in price as far as you having a negative return I think what drives the Jordan prices are the people that may just be sending in the bulk orders and then there's too many lists there's too many available so as as flippers and people that are buying cards to send them in for grading you have to be kind of savvy to be like well do I want to send in ten because I may have to sit on five or six of them for a while before I can put them back in to the market because you know I don't want to over saturate my market I don't want to compete against myself so yeah pretty much for that those years I've focused on Jordan because you know he he's a hall-of-famer everybody knows who he is some people might want to pick up a sword incar that they don't even really care cars they just maybe they can collect his sneakers but they want to put his car put some cards up in their little special closet where they have all their Jordan sneakers that or something like that so Jordan has an appeal that you know goes across you know a lot of you know lies not just basketball collectors I mean he's a hall-of-famer big-time so for the older the older stuff yeah Jordan I did get real lucky and and this card I still have to send out I bought a box of 94 95 upper deck and they've been running from 40 to 60 on eBay and I found it on offer up for 25 almost everything in there was was garbage except for one card it was a Shaquille O'Neal holo view and I looked and the last one it has sold at least in the last three months on eBay at a 9.5 sold for $96 so there's some other guys in there in the junk wax era that if you don't see their card being sold you know over and over and over and sometimes you get lucky because with the ninety stuff people have moved to the prisms and all this and if you have a limited budget to spend on the cars and he spent 25 and I could possibly get 96 not you know 96 to $100 on this this Shaquille O'Neal that just hasn't really been graded and sold population on a 9.5 is probably a 1 right now and so you know there's some other guys in there that you can pull out and make some profit that's right Lee but obviously it's got to be two key guys oh yeah gonna do that so that you just mentioned buying a box on offer up I was gonna ask what are the what are the sources that you that you use these days to find inexpensive junk wax so inexpensive junk wax would be there's always a bay but you know be careful looking you know you have to look at the sold prices you know there's some people are gonna put up the old stuff for 50 which is like two and a half times what you should be paying for and then I've looked on offer up and I don't think I've bought much from Facebook marketplace but Facebook marketplace has some some pretty good deals actually from watching your video I picked up a Myles Turner prison but it was a it was a read somebody it was a 9.5 it was 30 bucks so I just went ahead and snagged it off of Facebook marketplace because I kind of there's just not that many of them out sure and then there's not that many of them that have been graded and then when you look at grading if you go with somebody like PSA and you do a bulk order you've got 65 to 85 days until that card returns to you so if you're holding to save Myles Turner and he gets hot and nobody has any of his cards graded yet hardly and let's except for those hardcore PC Myles Turner guys then you can get in on um you know that action and and and and flip something because you already have it graded right right that's a great point I do like Facebook marketplace a lot if you live near a major city so like here in Atlanta face book marketplace is very active and it is actually I have found it to be an incredible source for junk wax because what because what people are doing is they're cleaning out their garages they're cleaning out their attics I was talking to a lady the other day through Facebook marketplace who unfortunately one of her parents had passed away I think her dad passed away and so you know they're cleaning out his house is a state and he had a big big collection of unopened junk wax boxes and she's just looking she doesn't know what these things are worth and she's just looking to kind of dump them and get rid of them as part of the cleaning out the house process so if you live near a major city you will occasionally see these huge lots of unopened junk wax show up on Facebook marketplace where you can actually go physically pick them up and buy them and a lot of times get them for for a significantly better price and what you would find on like eBay for example now obviously if you aren't near a major city there may not be enough local facebook market you know listings for that to happen but I think it's something that you should always keep your eye on yes definitely yeah but the major city on closes to is they're all very depressed right now I'm right outside of Houston right right they're hateful yeah especially especially all those fans who paid to go to all four of the Hoos game oh my god which none of which resulted in a win what what a crazy world series yeah goodness well I'm glad the traffic will be better on the way home from work geez there you go there you go glad we got that behind us what any other any other tips or thoughts for anybody who's I you know interested in employing the strategy and wanting to get into potentially buying junk wax looking for cards to grade look for a specific card and look for how it's been selling and then you have to do your research to find out what series and what year because remember back then they would have series 1 series 2 you have the series one where you have the veterans and then the series 2 where you have the traded players and more of the rookies in there so once you find your card make sure that you know what product it's in because you could accidentally you know blow a few dollars and like this is not what I was looking for at all that person wasn't even in there then you know just be like like we said just because you pull something that might be a great car rarity really doesn't matter in fact you can decrease the value of your card if you send it in and you get an 8 or below then you were better off selling it raw and in essence because now it's known that the card is is not a 9.5 or a 10 but I would say do your research and then kind of way if you're if you're looking at this 90s whack stuff don't be scared to to go with a longer submission if you do 65 85 days on Jordan you're gonna be ok with this newer stuff if people are sending in all their Dwayne Bacon's now to be a safe and we get to four months later and the bake is not sizzling you just you just dumped a lot of money and you're gonna have a lot of slab bacon and people are gonna be like what's wrong with you yeah I don't I don't know the Bacon's could keep sizzling I don't know I'm not so sure about Charlotte but they're I got some friends who I rely on Duane bacon so hopefully the Bacon's gonna keep sizzling for them he I haven't I have a dozen of his rookie cards but do not go anywhere right now yeah we'll see he had a great opening game and and softened a little since then but hopefully he'll hopefully he'll keep it going yeah yeah and you made one point right there which I wanted to call out because it was something you called out in your article that I thought was a really good point if you are concentrated on buying the same card I it allows you to once you pull a bunch of them from different boxes of junk wax it allows you to put all of them side-by-side out on your table and compare them also it actually helps you figure out which ones are most likely to grade as a ten or a nine point five because you can you can compare it to all of the other examples right in front of you correct and that's that's a big key there you know if I've only got one or two of a card it's harder to tell which one is centered better and then you find little little tricks you know like like the stars I was telling you about on the back of that all-star there's some other stuff with prisms like all the prisms have the little dimples on the side of the car to the left and the right account to see okay there's four dimples on this side but there's five and a half over here it's not centered so there's little tricks that you'll see because you'll you'll you'll see as you're looking at the cards side by side and say this one just looks it just looks off and so you find the one that compared to the other it looks great and they compare the other ones to that one and you know you're you you're probably increasing the chances of you getting a nine point five a 10 I you know you I don't know how many percent but better than the guy who just pulled one and said okay I'm gonna Cindy because I like this card awesome awesome so final question with the money that you have made from buying the junk wax sending the cards off for grading and then being able to sell some of the graded cards at a profit what what are you buying today are you buying more junk wax over you've been buying some of the bottom guys I was hoping you'd ask that question because I wanted to share yeah you can you can do anything with your your your profit you you can put it in a savings account you can go to dinner you can throw it in the air you can put it on the mattress and roll in it all of those would have been better within then what I did this is 2016 goes back in 2016 and I'm buying into group breaks and god blessed blade Baldwin but I picked up Grizzlies and group breaks in 2016 2017 and it hasn't paid off until 2018 with jarran Jackson and uh you know I guess I'm one of those guys that you know I'm not a gambler but I try to go with you know what's the look the least I can put in for the most rewards and in 2016 picking the Grizzlies and group breaks what's not the best way to reinvest my money understood understood well hopefully hopefully that will come come back now that you got some jaren Jackson and and the recent years have certainly been a little bit better definitely that's funny Chris thanks for joining us the sports card investor loved this story thanks a lot man it's been a pleasure appreciate you having me on for sure for sure ok guys I hope you enjoyed my interview with Chris and in celebration of that interview here is my second give away for today I have gone out and bought some junk wax of my own some of the junk wax that Chris referenced during the interview this is 1990 FLIR basketball what I'm gonna do if you enter my contest the I'm gonna ship 12 packs of 1990 FLIR basketball along with $20 in cash in hopes that out of one of these packs maybe you pull a Jordan and then the 20 bucks in cash is gonna cover your submission to send that off to PSA or bgs to have agreed it so you can take exactly what Chris just suggested and put it in action totally for free courtesy of sports card investor if you win the contest and all you have to do to enter the contest is go to my website sports card investor com scroll down right below the first article the main article on the site and there is a box that says sign up for free sports card investing tips by email simply put your email address in that box and hit submit and you are in the contest if you're if you have already done this in the past if you've already put your email in there perfect I got you registered for the contest anyone who's ever put their email in there is in the contest but if you haven't done it yet go to my website put your email address in there and one week from today I'll be picking the winner of the contest from someone who entered their email and I will be sending them 12 of these packs along with 20 bucks for their beast vgs or PSA submission so go do that now again sports card investor calm and also don't forget about the second giveaway we're doing with eight one eight height plug for my disc or channel the link to the kids case breaks giveaway is in the show notes on youtube or on my podcast and that is the giveaway for the Dennis Santana rookie card autograph and the Caleb Ferguson rookie card Jersey autograph guys when you're on my website sports card investor com make sure to check out the newest article from Brian Flynn resources to evaluate baseball prospects and also if you have not yet joined my Facebook group or my discord chat server the links to join are in the main menu bar of sports card investor comm you are going to want to join and take part of the great conversation that is taking place in both places again sports card investor calm thanks so much for listening to another episode hope you enjoyed it today look forward to seeing again on Wednesday with the next one take care [Music]

Channel: Sports Card Investor

Views: 45,526

Keywords: sports card investor, sports card investing, investing in sports cards, sports card flipping, baseball card flipping, basketball card flipping, football card flipping, flipping sports cards, garyvee, gary vee, garyvee sports cards, gary vee sports cards, buying sports card, cheap sports cards, budget sports cards, buying sports card collections, cheap basketball cards, cheap baseball cards, michael jordan cards, michael jordan basketball cards

Id: Hy7Zfv_184E

Length: 33min 22sec (2002 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 03 2019