5 Selling Secrets

Practical Buying/Selling tips from the National and SoCoExpo.

These will help you be better on both sides of the table.

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Welcome to Slabnomics, the intersection of collecting investment and market theory for sports cards. This is episode 13: Five Selling Secrets. Before I dive into what the secrets are, I'm going to give a little bit of background about my experience over at the SOCO vending for three days, as well as walking the floor of the National for a couple days before and after the SOCO Expo. That'll fill in some parts of those stories. So I went over to first walk the floor of the national on Wednesday. I was able to just really wander around. And one of the pieces of advice that I gave everyone for the tips leading into the national was know exactly what you're looking for. Day one, I wasn't trying to do that. What I was trying to look for was absolutely nothing. And that's what I found. So goal completed. What I really wanted to do was just get more of the flavor of what the national was. It was my first national. So I'm not trying to just run in there and try and find a bunch of cards. I just want to go around, see what the tables look like, see who's there, how much vintage is there compared to modern stuff, how much soccer is there going to be, which sport dominates, how much wax is there, who has the coolest booth, who's giving away the most stuff, who's being the loudest, who has the biggest lines. Those are the kind of things that I was looking for. And what I found was it was really interesting the different types of booths that they had this year. Now, again, first year there, so I'm not sure how this has changed in the modern era, but there are different sections. It's not just walking in and just being tables on tables on tables of people selling cards. There is that, but you also walk into the back, and now you have more established companies like Steel City Collectibles, Blowout Cards, David Adams. They have their big setups out there selling wax. Really cool stuff you could find in there, like base Pokemon 1999 booster packs. You could find pretty much any year of anything. Go to BBC E if you want to check out some really cool vintage boxes that they had available. And then also there was something called the Breakers Pavilion, where it was very clear that breakers were going to be an emphasis for this national. They want to be able to boost the people that are getting the eyeballs coming in. So uh probably good, maybe 20% of the national floor was the breakers. And they had the camera setups, they had the lighting, they had all of their sound effects and everything going on. So the Breakers Pavilion was a lot of fun, a lot of energy going on. Really cool to see the different breakdown of all the different providers and resources around cards, as well as those selling cards and selling wax. Now, you also saw a lot of cards, and I will say that vintage is still very much alive. There was a mix of Pokemon, not nearly as much as I would have thought. Now it is called the National Sports Card Convention. So I'm kind of glad about that. But it is a big surprise after coming from the Austin card show where there was a massive amount of Pokemon, probably 70, 80 percent, as I've said, lining the table. So being able to roll around and see all the cool vintage cards at every level that you can imagine was amazing. Just also really well organized, I thought. Plenty of flow, plenty of room to walk around. Of course, there's lines and there's some choke points here and there where booths are going to be a little bit more popular than others, and it's gonna be hard to walk in. But for what they were doing, I think they did a fantastic job in organizing it. And I think the energy surrounding the national was poignant. At the Soko Expo, where I vented for a few days, um, different experience in that I was there as a contributor. So my focus was a little bit more on what I was trying to achieve, the goals that I had around selling some of my inventory. But I was able to get a flavor of what other people were selling at the same time, walking around here and there. Kudos to Scott and to the team for being able to coordinate that event so well in just year two of the Soko Expo. I think it was a huge success. And most of all, everyone had a lot of fun hanging out with each other. So shout out to the guys that I was able to meet out there that I'd only been talking to on Instagram, like Cleveland Sports Cards, uh WCO Cards, uh, of course, Anthony over at SAC, my guy always gets a shout-out. Uh, Noah collects soccer, Oasis sports cards, too many to count. But those are a few of the guys I was really happy to run into, spend some time with, and hopefully we'll be able to get pancakes next year, guys. So, with that being said, let's dive into those five secrets of selling that I learned from being at the Soko Expo in the National. The first one is manners maketh man. When you see someone go up to a booth and you're a seller, they come up to you in many different ways they approach the table, right? Some people almost seem like if they could talk to no one, they would love to have it that way. Some people are extra gregarious and come up just chatting a mile a minute already. Some people are kind of in between, where they're very natural and very conversational. So there's so many different flavors of what you can be, and everyone's okay just being who you are. But what you must have is manners. If you want to make a deal go down, you're going to have to be a pleasant person to interact with. And I saw this both on the buying and the selling side. When I'm selling there and someone comes up and they're very polite, they're very conversational, they're asking me questions. I found it much easier to give them a good deal when they asked if I had room on things, right? As a buyer, in the same token, when I come up to a seller, I'm usually asking them, hey, how's the show been going? You guys have a good day yesterday. What are the things that are moving a lot? You know, what do you collect? The more you're building those relationship blocks, the better deals you're really going to get done. So sometimes we forget while we're chasing cardboard that we're all just humans. We're all just people that like to be treated well, that like to have a friendly smile, that like to have someone look at you in the eyes and treat you like a human being, not like you're in the way of them having what you have. So if someone leaves the table and they're able to tell their friend, hey, I've dealt with that guy before, great guy, you've done well for yourself, not just in that sale, but in the future. And we'll get into that a little bit later. But Manners Make of Man starts with how did I treat that one person in that one sale? And how is that going to affect who I am reputationally? Second, this one goes a little bit more into math for you guys. Number two, context, not comps. The first thing that we do is we go and we look at comps. And it's natural, right? As human beings, looking at something that doesn't really need to be had by any of us, it's almost impossible to objectively value. And there's no real data except what people have paid for it in the past. Now, the problem with that that we don't think about a lot is not just maybe it was six months ago, maybe it was a year ago that someone bought it. It could also be maybe that sport was in its offseason, right? It could be maybe that auction ended at 4 a.m. It could be maybe there was a big game on that everyone was watching in maybe the Super Bowl was happening, right? And someone just snuck that comp in. So the inefficiency of markets happens when you have a lack of liquidity in these markets. And the smaller the market that you're operating within, the more opportunities you're going to have to find pockets of illiquidity. If you're trying to buy a Michael Jordan rookie, you're going to be able to triangulate on what the objective value is very easily because there are many, many copies and they sell pretty frequently, right? If you're trying to buy a select 2016 messy gold out of 10, well, maybe it's been a year and a half since that sold. And maybe that one sale was done at 4 a.m. on an auction or was done on a buy it now where someone put it up when they had one too many and just didn't get the price right. Right. And that's the one comp that we have for such a rare card. So comps are a starting point, but what really matters is the context that surrounds them. I believe very strongly in my life that it's in the margins that you win and you lose. Right. There are very few opportunities where it's knocking it out of the park, right? Most of your wins are going to come as singles and a double here and there. So let me tell you guys a story to kind of boil this down practically for context, not comps. On the last day of the national, I was walking around and I had just completed everything over at the Soko Expo, had a lot of cash. I needed to purchase a few cards to bolster some of the inventory that I'd let go. And I had some very specific things I was looking for, mostly some high-end Ronaldo or Messi. So I was walking around to all these tables. There's only three hours left in the national, right? Everyone's gone through the ringer. These guys have been talking to people, thousands and thousands of people in some cases for days. And I know how tiring that is. So I came to this table that I could tell was mostly baseball, mostly basketball, some pretty high-end stuff, good stuff. And I saw two messy cards in there. 2023 Selects. They were both gem meant tens, one was an orange, one was a white. Nice cards. So I looked up the comps as we start, and the comps were back in April and back in June. Now, for those that buy and sell soccer a lot, April and June comps are pretty decent because as I was saying, with the illiquidity of some markets, sometimes you're working on something a year ago and you have to kind of front date it, right? So being two or three months ago, most people are going to see that as a pretty decent comp. So I offered him cash, full comps on both of those in a package deal. And it was well under the sticker. Uh, I believe it was about 25-30% under the sticker price, but we're going off comps, right? He made a phone call, asked if it was okay, and we did the deal. So why do I believe that I win there? Well, there's a couple big things. Number one, it seemed obvious to me, and this was borne out through the transaction, that he was consigning these cards, right? If there's only two soccer cards in six cases that he's running, they're probably not his. So he's not going to be in tune with the market like someone who buys and sells a lot of soccer is. The second thing that stems from that, Messi's market in the last couple of months has been absolute rocket ship. And I believe that's going to continue. And I think a lot of people believe that. He's the first entry point for anyone coming in from other sports. So Messi's comps two, three months ago are wildly inaccurate. In many cases, they've doubled since then. So sure, I bought it full price at comps. I didn't even argue or try and get a bulk discount or anything. But the context around those comps is what really matters. And knowing where that person is and what the likely scenario is that we can bear out through a little bit of conversation and a little bit of turning over rocks gets you into those premier buying opportunities that do exist there. All right. So that was context.comps number two on my secrets. Number three, a secret that many buyers and sellers know. You win on the buy side. So a lot of people are going to focus too much on the sale, right? We go there, we go to a show, we sticker everything, we put it 20% high, and we just hope somebody comes along and buys it, right? I believe that the best deals come from a win-win. And when you focus too much on just trying to squeeze out more money on the sale side, you're focusing only on yourself. And when you do that, you're unable to meet the buyer where they are. Because really, the key to selling is to be able to get into that person's psyche and to understand what they care about. Because people pay money for what they care about. So there are different motivations that people have when they're trying to sell their cards. Why did they buy that card? Did they buy that card because they thought it would go up? Did they buy that card because they saw it walking on a floor and it was shiny? Did they buy it because they loved that player? Did they buy it because they needed a spike of dopamine? A lot of times when they then go to sell, the differences of why a person bought then bleed into the reasons and motivations why they sell. If a person is selling because they're simply tired of the card, that means something different than if they're trying to reap a profit. And that means something different than if that person is almost abhorrent to them, which happens sometimes, right? You bought a player and either they did something off the field or they disappointed you with the performance on field. And just over time, looking at that player almost seems like a disappointment that's reflected in your own activity. So at that time, how people are more likely to give you a good deal because they have an emotion that's tied to that card, a negative emotion. When you can find those different emotions that someone has selling the card, you're going to make better purchases. And when you make better purchases, then hopefully on the other end, you're going to have an easier path to sell that card because you're going to have a reason why it's going to work out or not work out. And you can keep things a little bit less emotional. So when I say you win on the buy, it's really more about keeping things out of emotions. Because when you operate only with logic, then you're going to be able to make much smarter purchases. And then on the other end, when it's time to get out, much better sales. All right. So that was secret number three, you win on the buy side. Secret number four, going to get into a little bit of psychology here, sales psychology. People buy you, not your cards. This goes a little bit hand in hand with people buy from emotion, not from logic. But people buy you not your cards. So when you walk around the national and you see these old fellows that have been in the game for a long time, you see them sitting at their tables, crossed arms, gazing out into the distance, looking like they're probably thinking about the last fish that they caught or something that they care about a hell of a lot more than sitting at this table. And when you see those guys, you don't really feel a lot of impetus to go up to them. I usually pass by those tables immediately. Don't even bother. And that goes along with one of the key themes I've been talking about, which is friction. The buyer has many options in this day and age, right? It's not just at the national with tables on tables on tables of different cards and a lot of the times the same cards. It's also that we have eBay, we have Alt, we have Fanatics Collect, we have Golden, we have Heritage Auctions, we have My Card Post, shout out Mark Hill. We have all these different options and we have relationships where we could just buy from people that we know and trust and like. So with all these options, why are we going to waste our time with a guy who looking at him makes us not want to talk to him? You're already losing me before I've even interacted with you. So on the flip side, when you're selling cards, don't be that guy. Be engaging. Speak to the person as a human being. Speak to that person as if they're going to be your new friend. That's kind of the attitude I try and have when people come up to my table. If you treat someone like they're going to be your friend, a lot of times they're going to be, which I think is a really powerful, simple concept. And maybe I'm a softy, but uh I really believe that. That if you treat someone like a stranger, they're probably gonna stay a stranger. If you treat them like a friend, they become a friend. It's almost like a fake it till you make it kind of thing, right? So on the selling side, have good posture, right? Posture is incredibly important because the way that we communicate as human beings is very little through our words. It's mostly through our tone and through our posture. So remember that when you're selling cards. Remember that people are seeing you hundreds, maybe thousands of people are seeing you when you're not looking at them. And they are deciding if they're going to come over to you and look at what you have to buy. The second piece of it, people buy you not your cards. I figured that having my showcase out with all of these cards that I thought were really cool, have a good mix of players, have a lot of rookies, have a lot of Gemin 10s, I figured that would be enough to have people just see it, love it, buy it. What I found though, and this might be the most important thing that I'm going to tell you, nestled here into the middle, the juicy middle. The most important question that you can ever ask there is what are you hunting for? What you don't want to say is can I help you? What what do you feel when you hear that? Can I help you? You instantly have your your guard up, right? Because we all know we've all heard that many, many times. But what are you hunting for? It kind of puts you together into a little pack, right? You're probably going to say to yourself, Well, this guy is is gonna help me find what I'm trying to find. This guy actually cares about what I'm looking for. Not can I help you, which it doesn't give that same messaging to the brain at all. But what are you hunting for? Because then I can help you find it. And I would say a good 80% of my deals came from asking that question. And sometimes they said, Oh, I'm on the lookout for Christian Pelic. Or sometimes it was, I'm looking for this set, or sometimes it was, I'm looking for autographs. Or sometimes it was I'm looking for cards that are between$100 and$200. And I made some big sales on that last one. There are many different motivations for why people are buying. And we forget that sometimes. We forget that they're not just collectors, they're not just resellers. There's many different avenues of why they might be there trying to purchase. So what are you hunting for? Immediately builds trust, I believe. It puts you on the same team, and it also speaks to a very primal guy energy. So that was number four, people buy you, not your cards. Number five, the last one, and this might be from my Boy Scout days, but be prepared. I spoke about this on my pre-national tips as well. But if you don't know what you're looking for, it's very hard to find it. If you have a list of things that you're trying to find for certain reasons, a lot of times if you're doing it for a PC, that's pretty easy, right? You get to say these are the things that I have still on my list to find, maybe to complete a set or this player year I don't have. But if you're you can also do that with things that you think are going to turn a profit for you, right? What are the buying motions that you believe the market is undervaluing? How do you like to make money? Is it by prospecting, finding people before they're known in the market? Is it by finding something the market doesn't yet understand? Like they don't know how rare this card is. So as long as you have that understanding of what those things are and what your lane is, because the national, there can be so many lanes. It's like this massive superhighway. And if you just simply drive and let the steering wheel move wherever it wants to move, you're not going to get anywhere. So one of the biggest parts of being prepared for me isn't just knowing what you want, but it's also preparing for inflection points. And it's something I talk a lot about in my personal life. I believe that most of our life we go through normal day in, day out stuff, right? We make decisions that are just tied to daily outcomes. What am I going to wear today? What am I going to eat today? Am I going to exercise today? Uh, am I going to have a good attitude today? I'm not saying these aren't important. They're actually foundational, right? They're building blocks for creating the person that you are because you are the sum of your choices. But the extension of that, if you are the sum of your choices, the building of yourself into the man or woman you want to be through your choices leads you to these big choices that you have and prepare you to make those in the best way possible. So, what does that mean? People often compare things using the simile like a muscle. So building a habit is like building a muscle. You have to do it over and over and over again. It gets better, it gets easier, it gets bigger. And I think that really applies to these inflection points where you have this huge decision where all the other things that you prepared in advance for are going to bear out or increase the stealing level of your success. So, for instance, at the Soko Expo, I vended it this year and I was there for three days. This was the biggest soccer selling event of the year. And the level of preparation that I put in directly went into the outcome that I had. There's a few different things to make that easy. For instance, having a tablecloth that had my branded logo on it, and also being a different color made me stay in, made me stand out, gave me a lot of brand recognition. That was something that had to be prepared ahead of time. Having some kind of display that also helps you stand apart is also important. The little display banners that you can have on the side of your table, uh certain things like having the dollar box to drive traffic over to your table. I had a little promotion going because I was trying to promote my podcast a little bit. So I was giving out free cards if you subscribe to the podcast. Maybe that's why some of you have me in your ears right now. But all of these things are things that needed to be prepared, right? It's small. I had to design a little sign to put in there. I had to order one of those little display cases to put it tabletop, had to get the tablecloth order to have time and all these little things, had to figure out how that was all going to travel with me, had to make sure that I had display cases rented, all the little things that you do, right? Stickering all of your cards, that makes for a better buyer experience. So putting in the time to do that, radically important. Taking stock and inventory of what you have through Excel or any of the other tools that vendors use lets you actually note where the successes were, what players sold, what players didn't sell, where did I get great pricing? Where did I get more bulk moved? Data is very, very powerful. And if you're not using that, then you're leaving a lot of meat on the bone when it comes to your future vending opportunities and how you increase your likelihood of success for those. So all of these things are very small, but they all accumulate. You give yourself more outs, more odds of success by preparing well across all of these little channels so that when you come to that big inflection point where your success is really measured, that's where you can make the most of it. So number five, be prepared. I'm going to run through those really quickly, just one more time. First, secret to success, manners maketh the man. Second, context, not comps. Third, you win on the buy side. Fourth, people buy you, not your cards. And lastly, be prepared. So again, want to give a big shout out to everybody at the Soko Expo. The community out there is so fantastic. I know I always say that, but truly, the soccer guys are very much like that. They got a lot of love. So much love right back to the soccer community. And can't wait till the Soko next year. It's just the energy is going to be off the charts. And one more thing to think about before you go. You can be anyone you want to be. So be kind. Thank you so much for listening to Slabnomics episode 13, 5 Seller Secrets. Keep building. Talk to you later.