Labor Peace!

Major League Baseball agreed to a new five-year collective bargaining agreement the other day.  I'm really excited because almost all my cards I'll soon have available (yeah, sorry, I'm still working on that) for sale are baseball cards, and that would pretty much kill this whole online card shop thing right from the get-go if there were a strike.  I was pretty sure they would get it done, though, because baseball's labor front has actually been rather peaceful the last few years, despite having a stormy past.  That being said, seeing all the problems that the NFL had and the NBA is continuing to have, I was a bit nervous.  But it seems to have all worked out in the end.  

Here's a link in case you want to know all the nitty-gritty details:

http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20111122&content_id=26025274&vkey=news_mlb&c_id=mlb

'Till next time!

Selling Soon!

My logo from an earlier attempt at
doing online sales drop-shipping
computer and video games.

Well, even though I'm a long ways from getting a full-blown website going, I'm devising a way to get some sales, perhaps "test sales," if you will, going.  See, I already have a storefront at atomicmall.com from when I was selling computer games online under the name "Stu's Video Games." (See picture above.) I really like using that site, and through it I have a feed already that gets my products featured through Google Shopping automatically when I post things to the site.  The best part is it's free to post items.  The biggest problem I have is that selling trading cards under the name "Stu's Video Games" is rather misleading, and likely to attract the wrong audience.  But I just thought of all this a little bit ago, so hopefully by the time I post next I'll have figured it all out and, with any luck, actually have something that somebody could potentially buy from me! 

Organizational Progress

One of the things that I didn't get to last time in regards to problems I'm facing is that I have a whole bunch of semi-organized baseball cards that I need to organize in order for this project to become very effective.  I had organized a considerable amount of the ones I have available, and I have been working hard to get more of them organized in a manner that if somebody were to want to purchase it, I could actually find it for them and subsequently send it to them.  As you can clearly in the photo to the right, I've been hard at work!

Beginning Challenges

Well, like any endeavor worth undertaking, my goal of establishing an affordable online card store has some challenges that I will need to overcome.  I've thought of a few major ones that I will address today, as that will perhaps get me thinking of potential solutions.

Here are some of the potential problems I need to overcome, listed in the order greatest to least importance, in my personal opinion:

1. I don't have the Internet at home.  This, needless to say is a huge one.  It is virtually impossible to run any sort of Internet-based store without the Internet.  I typically use the Internet at my mother's home, as well as the local library, and a local coffee shop.  Even when I have the Internet, Pocatello, Idaho, where I currently reside, was recently rated as having the nation's slowest actual Internet connection speed, so even when I am on the Internet, it can be a bit frustrating, both in waiting for my computer, and in the fact that I could go to some random town, like, say, Hampton, Iowa, and be able to find a better Internet connection than here.  Fortunately, my wife has to take an online class for school, and she finally decided that we're going to get it sometime before the next semester starts in January, so while I can't do anything about the speed, the availability of the Internet will shortly resolve itself.  HOOORRAAYY!!
2. My scanner isn't working well. Having done direct Internet sales a few previous times, I know that having a good picture is utterly important, and the best way to get pictures of baseball cards is to simply scan them in.  The printer/scanner which my wife and I inherited this past summer works beautifully as a printer, but the scanner scans images in rather fuzzy, and I don't want my potential customers thinking that I'm selling them shoddy baseball cards!
3. I haven't blogged before!  It's true.  But I decided I should start doing it, because I have heard that blogging regularly on a website a way to get it to move up in search engine rankings. Specifically, one of the things search engines look for is frequently added content, particularly words.  Plus it will help when more people start reading and commenting on my blog, hence doing some of my work for me! In the meanwhile, I have to learn how to use this thing, and add pictures and links and so forth, so it will look more visually interesting than it currently is (or isn't).  I find it ironic that as the world is embracing microblogging for the purpose of changing the world and overthrowing world governments and so forth, I'm just barely getting into regular blogging for the purpose of starting a small business.  This is so 2008.  I guess I had better catch up sometime, so this is as good a time as ever.

Well, to go along with the first problem I addressed, I am out of time to write more, but perhaps I'll come back to it the next time I'm online! 

Humble Beginnings

"I am going to start an online trading card store."


This is the idea I had the other day, and I've decided to start seeing what it would take to pull it off.  I currently have a fairly substantial baseball card collection, and I decided to sell (most of) it.  Most people when they sell their old baseball cards, they tend to simply sell them off in bulk to a local card shop or one of many different sites that seem to be available online with the purpose of buying bulk trading cards, presumably for resale in other outlets.  Or so it seems if you use a search engine for "buy baseball cards" or "sell baseball cards" Many of them only want to buy a minimum of 1000 cards (or some other large number) at a time. The other predominant online presence in the buying and selling of sports cards is auction/direct sales sites (i.e. eBay, yardseller, etc.) including a few auction sites designed specifically for selling sports cards.  But the most discouraging thing is that many of these sites feature one of two things:

1. Really Expensive Cards, like signed Alex Rodriguez cards from when he played for the Tacoma Rainiers in 1994, professionally graded with a score of at least 9.5/10, or something like that.  Seeking after professionally graded cards is unquestionably a rich-man's sport, but that's a subject I'll tackle on another day. Or 
2. Really Overpriced Common Cards, which usually occurs when somebody doesn't do their research and they think that their cards are worth far more than they actually are.  For example, as I type this I happen to have a card for Calvin Schiraldi (Topps 1987, #94) sitting next to me, so I searched for this card in a few different marketplaces online for kicks and giggles.  While there were some reasonable prices for the card available, I also found people trying to sell it for $1 and up!  The highest was $1.21 with $3.21 shipping.  $4.42 for a common card (ungraded) in one of those late-80's/early 90's super-overproduced sets, for a player that had an 8.89 ERA in 26 1/3 innings for the Mets in 1985!  I mean, I've never met the guy, and he's probably a great person and all, but on the other hand, when it comes to value in sports memorabilia, he isn't exactly a Michael Jordan or Babe Ruth, if you know what I'm saying...

In short, I decided to start an online trading card store that the average layperson who wants to get into card collecting can enjoy.  Anymore, so much of sports card trading seems to be focused on getting the best-graded card for the rarest cards, and it's hard to be a normal guy who likes baseball cards, and I want to create an online card store for the average Joe sports fans everywhere!