Quarantine has been long and dreary. We have all been struggling to find things to do with so much time on our hands. The primary way I’ve kept busy during quarantine is collecting sports cards.
Sports cards can be bought through online stores such as eBay or in packs from stores like Target or local card shops. The basketball card industry has grown a lot since the start of quarantine due to the amount of new collectors and the increased price of cards due to the new players in the NBA, such as Zion Williamson. This has brought much more attention to collectors who want endless amounts of cards. This is why I, along with three of my friends, have created our own sports card business.
We call ourselves “breakers.” Before creating this company, we set out to find something that would interest us and also make money. We all agreed on sports cards, knowing that this would be a good business because of the dramatic increase of interest. Along with the increased interest, the cards that come out of the box also became more expensive, ultimately making the business more popular, because of the chances of the box containing a valuable card. We open boxes of sports cards (not knowing what is inside of the box) and sell the cards inside the box. It isn’t as simple as it sounds though. When we break open a box of basketball cards we sell thirty spots, with each spot symbolizing a team. The prices for each spot vary. If cards in the box are from the team that you bought into, then you get to keep those cards. This especially interests us because we get to open $300-$500 boxes that we otherwise wouldn’t even dream of opening, and still are able to make money off of it. Obviously, this isn’t as thrilling when you pull a card of great value because it is not yours, but it still brings the same amount of excitement to me and my friends as if we were keeping all the cards in the box.
Many of our peers have asked us, why would you buy a spot or multiple spots if you could just buy the whole box? Well, buying a spot in one of our breaks ranges from $1-$40 dollars. Buying one of the boxes that we open is extremely expensive, and not many people are willing to buy a box that is over $200. Another question that we get asked frequently is, how do you make money off boxes that are this expensive, even if some spots are only $2? The answer is simple: in order to have a successful company you must have lots of variety not only in product but in pricing. In our company, we have many spots for teams that sell at $3 but also have spots that sell at $40. Many people like to buy multiple cheap spots, which helps us fill up spots faster. We make money each break by subtracting the price of the box and the cost for shipping from the amount of money we make for each spot. This number normally comes out at about $100.
We promote our company through Instagram, and use the direct message feature to reach out to all of our followers and ask if they want to buy a spot in our break. Currently, we have just surpassed 2,000 followers and are growing rapidly. Our customers pay us through PayPal and Venmo.We’ve learned that we need to invest in more expensive boxes in order to make a bigger profit. Our ultimate goal is to open up a shop where we can sell cards and boxes as well as doing our breaks. For us, creating our company was as simple as finding a hobby and finding a way to make some money with it. It could be this way for you too. Not only did it increase our knowledge in sports cards and help us thrive during the coronavirus, it also taught us the basics of designing a business.
