Locations
Over the past few weeks, I have covered small tidbits about my recent shop-crawling adventure to Kentucky from my home state of Michigan. Though I have given some helpful advice and talked about the process briefly, I have hardly covered much of the trip. Since then, I have been derailed with the prerelease and even missed a week of writing due to being stranded, but now is the time to tell the tale. I hope you all enjoy this, as I am going a bit off the beaten path and straying from my usual financial coverage for a week, but I will do my best to keep it entertaining and informative for those of you who may have similar ambitions in the future.
Preparation
Once you have a basis for your trip, it is time to start making some calls. When I say making some calls, I don’t mean just calling and asking if they have Magic cards in stock—generally, even if they have cards, they are not willing to let them go at the prices you want to pay. Instead, prepare a speech of sorts, or at least guidelines to keep you on track, and at the same time, spend as little time on the phone as possible. This may not seem like a big deal at first glance; I mean, what is the difference between three and five minutes?
When you look at the number of stores you are calling, though, it adds up. For example, when we did our trip, I called one hundred fourteen stores. If you look at the average time of two minutes saved per call, that adds up to two hundred twenty minutes—or roughly four hours—saved just by spending ten minutes writing up an outline.
If you have an idea of how much each store has to offer, you can reasonably estimate how much time you will need to spend at each, allowing you to coordinate with their business hours. Taking into consideration the amount of time and the business hours, you then should locate towns where you would like to stop each night. This gives you checkpoints from which you can measure how far ahead or behind schedule you are. Don’t worry if you spend more or less time at any particular store—you can always stop early or skip stores that seem less notable if need be.
We originally planned on leaving Monday morning and getting into Kentucky after shop hours on Wednesday, leaving us three full days of picking on a ten-hour road trip. This meant we needed to drive a little over three hours each day in the desired direction to stay on track, leaving us plenty of leeway if something came up.
The next step is more of an afterthought since the last trip, but I believe it will save a lot of headaches in the future. Call again. Don’t just assume you will show up at the perfect time to each of these shops and that everything will go smoothly; instead, plan for the worst.
Now that you have a rough sketch of your path and know your waypoints, it is far easier to know approximately what time you should arrive at each shop. Don’t give them an exact time, but something as broad as Monday afternoon should do the job. This solves multiple problems we ran into. Making sure the owner is going to be there to meet with you is essential since it is unlikely the local shop workers will be able to be much help when you are negotiating prices.
Now that you have all of the individual shop work done, it is time to go back to the map and devise a finalized route. Changes may have to be made to accommodate for certain shops, and you want to make sure you get those details down before you begin your trip. Once you have a “finalized” route, you are almost ready to leave. I say “finalized” because if there is one thing I learned from this trip, it is that nothing is certain.
The last few steps before you leave involve budgeting and making sure you have enough room for the load you believe you will acquire. If you are searching for a lot of bulk, taking a van or other large vehicle would be a far stronger move than taking a car. At the same time, if you are looking for singles, taking a van is just a waste of gas. By now, you should have a rough estimate of how many cards you can acquire and be able to go from there. In the day and age of digital banking, I would suggest only taking what you need for each day’s haul; after all, any civilized town big enough to support a game shop will have an ATM somewhere. This of course keeps you from taking as large of a hit if you’re robbed or some other series of unfortunate events occurs.
On the Road
Unfortunately, I cannot spill the beans on how I am able to talk shop owners into selling for what would be an unreasonable rate to any other trader. This is something you will have to learn on your own, and quite frankly, it’s not something I could teach even if I wanted to. Everyone I know who has done this to any degree of success in the past has a different method for bargaining, each with his or her own pros and cons. What I may be able to convince a store owner on, you may not, and the same is true for the reverse.
Now that you know the process, let me tell you how our week went. Even though we are still in the process of selling, I can give you a rough estimation from what we have already sold compared to what we paid and what I believe we have left still to sell.
Monday, we started off on our journey around eleven in the morning, just in time to hit a shop an hour south, which was supposed to be the first of many on our journey. Long story short: This is where I learned my lesson to call again—lo and behold, this guy was closed this particular Monday. Not the best way to start a trip.
From there, I called the other stores we had on the docket and set up an appointment in Toledo at 6:00 P.M., when the owner would get in. This gave us six hours to drive an hour and a half, so I did some on-the-fly research and called a few stores that I had previously disregarded due to how far off the highway they were.
Tuesday started off bleak, as we still had Monday lying heavily on our shoulders. Before the day started, I decided to call some of the local shops I had skipped over since they seemed to be more competitive stores that would be less likely to have any overstock. Lo and behold, one of them, but five miles away, said he was not only willing to part with bulk, but he had as much of it as we wanted.
We hurried over there to meet with his business partner—since he was out of town—and found a treasure trove of Zendikar-and-more-recent commons and uncommons by the tens of thousands. We settled on about three hundred thousand cards and paid just under $1,000. I also picked up some Italian Maze of Iths in pristine condition for $20 each and some foreign foils, which he was having a hard time moving for a very solid price.
After what seemed like one of the greatest meals of my life, we hit the road again, heading south finally. The next shop we hit was about an hour away, and although it didn’t pan out on the buying end, I did get some solid trades in to fill orders back home.
Once we got back on the road, we located a shop a little off the beaten path and way in the sticks, but after some troubled navigation and what seemed to be the same set of train tracks ten times, we finally arrived. This guy had just bought a collection and seemed to want to unload it just because he already had so much. We offered him our bulk price, and he happily agreed.
While we were there, we decided to do some picking since this was the last store for the day, and we had a few hours before they closed. What we found can only be described as pure gold! To give you some examples, we found Swords to Plowshares and Imperious Perfects in his commons that he sold for five cents each. We also found Lotus Bloom and about fifty other equivalent cards in his bulk rares for a quarter each. After digging through everything he had, we also negotiated on his personal binder and a large stock of older packs he had recently obtained.
Wednesday morning, with some wind in our sails, we hit up the first shop on our list. This guy has been doing business for years, and in doing so, he had accumulated large quantities of bulk along with a lot of collections that still needed to be sorted. We were almost fully loaded at this point, so we couldn’t negotiate on the bulk, but we settled on a collection he had recently purchased because he saw a few dual lands he wanted in it.
He had taken out the duals and left the rest of the binder, which we picked up for $250. This is one of those times where you score even more than you intended because when I was counting, I only took into account single copies of cards, but there were actually multiples in each sleeve, so instead of one Personal Tutor, we had five. With this shop under our belt, we decided to head for our final destination since we were already hours behind schedule. The final hours of the ride were somewhat stressful because we had already been having problems with this van, and putting an extra ton in the back going through the mountains was not appearing to do great things for it.
Closing
Overall, this trip proved to be successful, and with some more planning and resources, it could have been even better. That being said, I am going out on the road again next week en route to the Grand Prix, so I hope that because of all the things I have picked up on the Kentucky trip, this one can be far more organized and smooth. I will also be continuing my article series with members of the financial community soon with Carter Hatfield on the list next. He is a professional eBayer, and I am excited to pick his brain in regards to what exactly he does to take advantage of eBay as a successful outlet.
Join me next week, and until then, don’t get stranded,
Ryan Bushard
