I was talking to a friend last night and what he said was absolutely true “Zack you gotta track your buys.” And he is 100% correct. I am getting better at it. The question is, “am I in profit?” Because in order to know you will have to track what you bought for, when you bought it, what it sold for and when you sold it. That will tell you the market on it. I actually have the spreadsheet for it, it’s blank but I have it and that’s my step to getting better at tracking. It’s not much but for me it’s something. What you should know about me is that I do a lot of auctions where the cards are between 10%-50%. Mostly lots so that I have inventory at shows. Because what sells the most at shows are single cards that people like. So I definitely don’t have a profit margin problem, I’m in profit and I know it. Eventually I’m going to want to know where my money is coming from. Which IP is making me the most money and that is where tracking is going to play a major roll. Right now, everything is chaotic because I have consistent money coming in and consistent money going out. This machine I’ve created is working and so I’m working it. I’ve bought 103 cards in the past week and spent around $2,000-$2,500. But I’ve also made more than that just off of cards sold. So I can safely say that this card flipping loop that I am building is actually working for me. I got this card for $2 because I was the only one bidding. I can turn around and sell it for $21.95-$159.99. Or I can grade it and get substantially more for it. And it doesn’t even have to be a 10. So you see, I don’t have to write down what I’m doing due to profit margins, but I do need to start so that I can see what is making me the most money. “How do you get so lucky?!” Because I watch dragonball z. If you watch the shows, movies, and play the games then you get lucky a lot. Though it isn’t luck, you just know what you are looking at. Watching anime can make you money.

Based on how the show went and what people continued to ask me for this is what I bought. I’ve also been buying Pokemon cards but I support the local businesses when doing that. Those deals are better than what I can get on eBay. Union arena is making some waves. I saw a Pokemon vendor with a Gojo Jujutsu Kaisen tattoo and he didn’t collect the cards. So I gave him a Gojo card because he needs to start. For those of you that don’t know, Bandai created union arena and it is a card game from all these different anime’s. It is seriously undervalued right now. They have taken multiple IP’s that aren’t as popular as they should be and combined them all together to build a card game. It’s genius. I’m also heavy on these new kayou cards as you can see. It’s speculative as you know but the potential is there and I had a ton of people ask for naruto cards. I’ve also invested in some dragonball z cards because that was also brought up a lot. This is just week 1 of buying. I’ve got 3 more weeks to go before the show. I’ve bought over 65 cards. So if I keep going at this rate I’ll have 250-300 more cards and slabs. Oh, some over you are probably wondering about paying full price on eBay and then reselling. The answer is that I don’t pay full price. I look for cards that have sold for more and are being sold for less. On the slabs I always lowball. And more often than not I get the slab. Plus about 8 of these will go into the grading binder to be sent of for grading. Since these cards are higher quality I’ll send them to Beckett. Not just because PSA is going to stop grading low value for 4 months. But because the potential for a black label is statistically higher with Bandai compared to Pokemon. Plus dragonball z collectors prefer Beckett. And a black label would get sold easily.

So I woke up this morning to these two cards sold. I bought these at the previous show with trade for things that I had maybe $300 into and some cash on top. I profited quite nicely on this deal. So I essentially turned $400 into $900 give or take depending on eBay fees. So I decided to make an offer on two serialized naruto cards at $500 and they accepted that offer. I got asked 3 or 4 times at the show if I had any serialized naruto cards. My answer was always, “if I did I probably wouldn’t sell them.” Just because I love naruto cards and they are the only cards I really collect personally. If these two naruto cards are super clean I’ll send them off to Beckett. I’ve seen quite a few serialized cards get Beckett black labels. If they both get black labels which is unlikely but possible then they could sell for quite a premium I’m guessing. There are no sales so it’s a sellers market and people love Naruto. But there is a piece of me that is unlikely to sell them. Now look, naruto is an asymmetrical play in an unproven market. I don’t Recommend doing plays like this but because naruto is a massive IP I feel comfortable personally. When doing plays like this you should limit yourself to maybe 5%-10% of what you are looking to invest. Buy the stuff that sells easiest such as Pokemon. I have a lot invested in Pokemon so I’m fine taking Pokemon money and running a speculative play. Plus I have more cards to sell that I know will sell. I’ll just continue reinvesting.

Rules of having a credit card: 1. Spend only what you have. 2. SPEND ONLY WHAT YOU HAVE!!! 3. Keep utilization under 7% 4. Pay it off every day 5. Don’t become the product Spending what you have is how you don’t become the product of a credit card company. Understanding credit cards is no different than the psychology of understanding TCG. You have to know when to get out from underneath debt. You have to pay it off everyday no exceptions. I recently sat down with the CFO of Cracker Barrel and all of this was his advice to me. I’m not great with keeping up with financials in my construction business so I reached out to him and we sat down for 2 hours on how to better deal with the financial side of my business. But that’s beside the point. Be responsible with your credit and make sure that you have a system in place with rules for using it and know how much money you have. Keeping utilization low or even 0 every month is a non negotiable. If you have $10,000 in credit, don’t spend $9,000 every month and let the payment day get you. It’ll destroy your credit that month. Get another credit card every six months if you need to spend more. Rotating 3-6 credit cards can get complicated and I know people with even more. Learn how to deal with just one credit card then you can add more as long as your credit is strong. Zack… this is about flipping cards, how does that pertain to TCG cards? Because you can’t get money out of credit cards. You can pay for things but you can’t treat it like a bank. However, if you buy TCG cards and flip them using credit cards you can 4x your results. I have a points card from capital one as shown below. I can use those points for hotels and plane rides. My wife has one as well and we will use these points to go to Japan next year. And the credit card company is going to pay for our entire trip. You can also get money cards with 2%-3% money back. Robinhood recently produced a 3% credit card which is amazing but I don’t know how long it will last. (I’m watching that credit card). Next, It builds your credit which makes everything in your life cheaper. Your bills suddenly become lower because those companies checked your FICO and decided we are going to reward you because it rewards us. After that if you buy and flip TCG cards you are basically buying money using credit. By using the system that I use in here you can create cash flow and compound your money.

Let me tell you something. I really enjoy all of the people that I meet flipping cards. But one comes to mind that has taught me quite a bit when it comes to doing shows and grown me in ways I wasn’t expecting. His name is Jay, he’s “C group” for most of us in this “little blog.” Most of you know him and know how hilarious he is. He owns a toy shop. He has a big personality, I have a big personality. You can imagine the psychological torture that we put each other through on purpose. (And for fun) he will tell you he’s a grumpy old man. When in fact he’s just intelligent. Jays advice (which is actually pretty good advice): “go low ball toy people on cards.” I swear to god he said it while owning and operating a toy store. For those of you that know Jay, go haggle at 50% this week… who knows, he might just give you cards. 😂 he’s in this group reading this right now so I have to get my shots in because he’s going to get his in on Friday lol. (I’m kidding, don’t be the person that haggles at 50%.) He is correct, toy shop owners care about toys. They get into cards because that’s what the people want and it brings customers to their store. Their mindset is very different than what the younger generation is used to. They know their margins and profit is profit at the end of the day. Sure we want 100% back on our investments but that’s typically not how it’s going to work. Toy shop owners have been flipping toys since before AI and computers. Jay used to take checks by mail for eBay sales… we can’t even fathom having to wait for a check to come in the mail for an eBay purchase. That entire mindset is: I’ll buy it at 40% and if I get 70% for it then I’m in profit. Which is absolutely true and we should take that advice. When you have a card that you graded and spent $50 on the card and $25 for grading and the card comes back in a 10 and sells for $600. You have $75 in a $600 card. You can wait on someone to buy it at $600 which may take a bit longer. Or you can post it for $500 and make your money quicker. You were $75 in and now you’ve profited $425. Take the win. The faster you can buy, sell, and flip cards, the faster you’ll make $100,000. If you wait then you will go slower while scaling your business.