Cardboard Alchemy

Cardboard Alchemy:  noun - The art of turning cardboard into gold.  Don't you just love it?  For some reason, I find extreme satisfaction of buying low, selling higher, *and* having left over cards.  Two weeks ago, I bought a killer Albert Pujols collection.  Pujols is my favorite player.  I love watching him hit, and I love what he does off the field.  Through a few avenues online, I was able to sell two cards in the collection to get a third of my money back, sell the bulk of it a week later to break even (this morning), and sold

Latest Transactions

So, the comics are gone - a comic & toy shop in the dallas area picked them up. It took 3 hours for the whole ordeal. From printing and paying for shipping, taping up the boxes, loading them up and bringing them to the post office. On the phone, the post office was very nice. They told me to drive around the back, ring the doorbell and someone would help me out. I did that, and the woman who "helped" me was ... less than courteous. She opens the door and looks at me "Well? What do you need?" I

Garage Sale Finds and Mailday Goodness

So, my wife took the kiddos to sell some popcorn for cub scouts and was kind enough to let me go out on my maiden solo voyage to hit up the garage sales.  I picked up a few Astros jerseys for $7.50 each, an oil painting for $2, and hit up an estate sale, which yielded 2 vehicles full of stuffed and mounted ducks for a phenomenal price.  But that has nothing to do with cards, so I won't go into all that mess.  Let's get to the main event!  I pulled up to this one sale, and saw some

Friday and Saturday Pick Ups

I feel like I'm a high roller with all the money I've been putting out recently for cards!  Actually, I've been putting up record breakingly low prices for things.  I'm not sure how I keep running into these deals.  Many of them aren't super-awesome-fantastic.  They are just THERE, and they are not a risk, because I know at a minimum, I can make a small bit off of them.  Particularly, these $10-20 deals I run into that I feel confident I can have fun with, then pull $20 profit out of or so.  Friday night, I met up with a

The Good, The Bad & The Ugly

Well, I have some good news, and I have some bad news.  The good news - I picked up a pretty good deal last night! The bad news:  Someone scammed me out of a $250 Target Gift Card. Starting with the good - last night, someone had posted up online, several cards for sale for cheap.  I was considering not even getting them, because though it was a good deal, it was just too cheap to really make any money off of them.  The deal consisted of a few autographs, some serial numbered cards, a few Nolan Ryan, and an

Target Gift Cards & Blasters

A few days ago, my Target gift cards came in.  I decided to do some research, and many folks are saying I should try to sell the Target gift cards.  I found a site, Plastic Jungle, that will allow me to sell them at 90% of the value ... but only gift cards $25 or more.  2 of my cards were $10, so I decided to use them up.  On my way to grabbing dinner for my family, I ran into Target.  Interestingly enough, they had two clearance blasters at $11.99 each - 2011 Allen & Ginter, and 2011 Topps

Picked up a massive collection of … Comic Books?

Yes, believe it or not, I picked up a bunch of COMIC BOOKS!  I was cruising the internet a few nights ago, and found someone that had 24 long boxes for sale.  A good friend of mine who is a dealer gave me some pointers, so I decided to call up the seller.  As it turns out, he owns his own business, and picked these up, in hopes of doing some comic shows.  The shows cancelled, an he needed the cash quickly for inventory for his biz.  I was more than happy to help out :) The card-mobile becomes a

A Nice Surprise

I was on one of my favorite sports card trading forums today, and someone was speaking about getting some cards with rewards points from their credit card.  We only have one credit card, and I only use it to pay for some biz stuff, but I logged in and found out I had 62,000+ points!  I knew we had a lot, but never did anything with them, since we just don't do anything with the card, besides pay off the balance once a month. I decided to dig in deeper, and found out I could get $313 cash.  Eh, ok. 

Paypal Me $3 & I’ll Send you a Robinson Cano Rookie TODAY!

I was fortunate enough to grab 600 Robinson Cano rookie cards, and he is ON FIRE right now, so I'm sharing the wealth :)   Paypal $3 to tanmanbaseballfan@gmail.com and a Cano Rookie is sent to you TODAY! 2 for $5, or 5 for $10. 8 down, 592 to go! As I write this, the Yankees look to be going to the post season again. Cano is ON FIRE, has hit .621 in the past 7 games, now has 31 homers, and is arguably the best 2nd baseman in the game today. We won't hold it against him that he

I Traded my Autographs for a Car!

This past Friday, a few dealers flew in from Kansas and Colorado to inspect the autographs I had recently acquired.  We agreed to meet at the gas station down the road ... until my wife called in a panic: "BABE!!!  I was wrong - Cub Scouts is at 10, not 12!!!"  (it was 9:55 or so when she called).  So I had to (quickly) bring the party of out of towners home, and hastily throw everything in the garage, from the cardboard-mobile to setup shop and show them the goods there.  After a few hours of looking through them, and going