Well, here I am – at my desk, blogging.  Aside from 8 of the 9 1986-87 Fleer BGS Graded cards I have sitting on my desk that I got the other day, I am cardboard free. 

These past few months have been a whirlwind of wheeling and dealing.  All of the collections I have purchased, all of the card show transactions, etc.  Everything is gone. 

Well, let me back up a bit here – I do still have my Canseco cards.  I actually just put up the bulk of that collection for sale too.  I have some sort of a problem – whenever I sell out of stuff, I can’t just be content.  I have to keep trying to sell.  The last time this happened, I started selling the pictures on my walls in my office! 

I am going to amend my initial statement of running out of everything with this:  I still DO have about 3 million cards that my friend has.  I have access to them only whenever he gets them ready for me – generally in lots of 100-200k at a time.  So don’t go sending donation checks to me yet since I am cardboard destitute.  Wait, scratch that … if you are feeling the desire to … do it!

But either way, as of now, my house does not look like a card shop exploded in it, for the first time in a long time!

It is funny to think that very recently, my garage was stuffed with cards AND comics, and now it is looking sparse … comparatively, that is.  It is also strange to think that mere days ago, my office was nearing impossible to navigate successfully to the computer without some sort of a game plan, thanks to all the boxes that were all around. 

I’ll use the rest of this blog as a bit of therapy – mainly because it is bitter-sweet.  A few days ago, someone asked me if I had a collection to sell.  With only the “gravy” cards I had left – that is, the cards that sparked interest in me from collections that I did not want to sell immediately, I told him I did have a large lot ready to go. 

I took several videos, and he was interested.  Lots of big name players, and even some cards in the $50-$70 range.  Most were of the $1-5 variety though.  It was an impressive lot, and I thought that I wouldn’t find a buyer for all of them at once, due to the price being so high. 

After mulling it over, he said he would sleep on it, and so I went to bed.  I went to bed with excitment … could I really be on the cusp of having run out of EVERYTHING?  How would that feel?  What would I do?  I don’t know what really excited me so much about running out of everything.  Perhaps a sense of accomplishment; that I had made all kinds of purchases, and though it was all profit anyway, that it was success upon success, if that makes sense. 

When the buyer said yes, I was elated!  Before that happened though, I wound up pitching in other miscellaneous things, and ended up settling on a bit lower of price, but I was satisfied.  That satisfaction quickly turned into irritation, when it took me the better part of the afternoon packing up the entire collection. 

After all was said and done, the 62 pound package was packed, insured and sent off to the new owner.  I spent the rest of the evening, and today wondering “did I do the right thing?  Did my lust for conquering a 100% empty level cloud my judgement?”  There was, after all, good money to be made on those cards.  It was for some reason also rewarding to get down to a record low # of listings on ebay as well, though, I don’t know why. 

It could, perhaps, go either way – I could say yes, it was a good move because it could have taken countless hours and several months to move everything or $200-$800 extra dollars perhaps.  But on the other hand, it plays perfectly into the game I play whenever dealing cards.  I love being able to see what I could get as a lot, then end up breaking the lot over and over again, and tracking how much further I can get with the financials if I do the work myself. 

As a matter of fact, part of the meloncholy feel I have from this sale is that it prematurely ended a few of the “games” I setup on my spreadsheet to see how far I could go in terms of making the biggest return on my investments. Now, after selling it all, it is just like this one big mass deal that can scarcely be separated to make sense of what financials should go where. 

Yes, I love, love, *loooove* my phone caCHINGing whenever I have an offer or make a sale on ebay.  it is so much fun. 

I guess in the end, this is a lesson for me.  While I did succeed, and ended up doing what I was going for, I learned a lesson – that it isn’t just about selling; it is also about the thrill of finding the buyer and making the sale.  Almost like watching something that you plant, grow successfully into something big, strong and beautiful. 

So I guess I’ll leave it at that.  Thank you for listening … errr … reading.  This has been good therapy for me.  On to my next deal!  I’ve been interrupted (and thankfully so) a few times in this blog by my phone caCHINGing at me…perhaps we are close to dealing away those fleer bgs graded cards sooner than later!