Today was my birthday and my wife told me go over to the hobby shop and pick yourself up a box of something. To be fair I went to a shop I had never been to before. I took a look at the packs available, guaranteed hit packs were running between 20 and 40 bucks. A little to steep for rookie autographs if you ask me. Then I asked if they had any kind of relic/ autograph bargain bin. She handed me a box and I started going through it, picking out Eckersley relics and Dewey Evans autographs, Doc Ellis autos and George Foster autos. Figuring they’d run at most $10 a pop and I could haggle down from there. So I handed the owner the stack and asked how much. She started going through Beckett. Then started writing down the book price of each item. I was thinking OK just wait through it and see what she says, maybe she wants 50% of book, which is steep but I might be able to get her to 65% off book.
She comes back with the full price (book says they are worth she says). It was $175, I said look I can get any of these on ebay for 20% of book. She said she would rather not sell them than to take anything less than 15% off of book, which is all she was going to discount. I thanked her for her time and walked out. Now I understand that she is a business woman, and that she needs to make money too, but these cards were sitting in a box under the register, where no one could see them. It seems to me she doesn’t even want to sell any of these.
When I went to the card show back in April, I noticed there were two trains of thought as far as dealers go, first there is the dealer that knows he has to compete with eBay and prices his cards accordingly. This is the person I buy from. Then there is the guy that lives in denial, the one who still thinks it’s the late 80′s / early 90s when cards were going for book value, maybe 10% off. They only take book or near book and would rather sit on the cards before selling them for less than book. I don’t buy from these guys. So what to do? Should I shop at card stores and support the mom and pops who are local from us to buy from, knowing I’m getting a crap deal for every item I buy? Or should I exclusively buy from eBay and watch the mom and pop shops drop like flies? Personally, I can’t justify mom and pop pricing so I go back to eBay. I am torn though, I know this isn’t good for the hobby, but the other way isn’t good for my wallet and that’s more importnat to me.
I am curious though as to where everyone stands on this. You can take the high road and say I only shop at mom and pop stores, choosing to support the hobby on a local level and I won’t look down on you, but realize that as card prices go up there will be much less that we could afford in the future. Leave your comments I am curious.
This was at Sports Zone, wasn’t it? You should really check out Cardiacs; it’s much, much better.
Still, I’m much more of an eBay guy than a hobby shop guy. Even at the shop that I like (Cardiacs) everything is overpriced. I only buy from there when they at least come close to eBay prices. Hobby shops are nice to have around, but they’re not a charity…
i’m glad you wrote this article because i came upon the same situation as you. I wanted to get a hobby box of a&g and there weren’t any hobby stores close by. The looked for one online and drove there. They closed, and turned into a comic book store. I looked online and found another one. This time i called in to check the price. $132. FOR ONE BOX?? It’s going on eBay for 80 max. I opted to get two on ebay for around $150. I will never buy from the mom and pop stores for that kind of ridiculous pricing. Never.
ebay has changed the landscape of the hobby. Everyone who reads SCU and most other blogs know that book value means crap. I don’t understand at all why anyone would sell based on those values. Buyers have adapted to the changing hobby. If the local shops can’t adapt, then they deserve to go under. They are too stupid to realize that nobody is going to buy for that price. Not even Joe collector…maybe.
We’ll the mom n pops stores should know that they’ll have to compete with ebay and should start barging accordingly…, Or watch their cards pile up on the side.
Unless their main business is in some other collectible, that shop will not stay open for long. Three big huge fatal mistakes she made right there:
1) she doesn’t know what her stuff is worth
2) she’s not effectively displaying her inventory
3) she just turned down money from a paying customer who wanted to buy
There are two excellent card shops I go to in Atlanta, and both of them have every card already marked with a price and provide steep discounts for all the lesser selling cards to move them out of the store. I understand every card can’t go into the main case, but the ones I go to have a $5 and $10 box or a $1-$15 binder for these types of lesser relic and auto cards. Finally, you say she wants to run a business, but she had a customer ready to buy right in front of her and she trusted an arbitrary piece of paper to determine the value instead of the cash in your hand that you were ready to pay her! There are salespeople who dedicate their entire careers to doing everything humanly possible to get customers in that exact same frame of mind you were in with cash in hand and she turned you away. The bad business karma from that alone is going to doom that shop unless they are selling meth out the back door or something.
I say spend that money with a clear conscience on eBay and look around for another shop that knows what they are doing.
Two other things: for high end cards, 50% off book is the rock bottom you will probably find at a card store. They will usually be about 20-30% off at most. Yeah, eBay is cheaper, but you are also paying for the convenience of being able to see the card in hand before buying and there’s no shipping fees.
Also, did you say they were selling guaranteed hit packs? Unless you are talking about Stadium Club or a tin product that packs out that way, that is sleazy as hell. Let ‘em fail.
I rely solely on ebay for all of my singles. Same reasoning as you, I’m a bargain hunter and ebay is pretty much ripe for the picking.
I go to hobby shops for supplies, sleeves and toploaders, and the such. I’ll usually buy a pack or two while I’m at it, but that is about it.
Dude, you cant not support mom and pop stores! That will mean a world without Beckett and a world without baseball cards according to Ben Henry!
A world with no cards . . . hmmm, does that mean we can make our own?
I think is good enough for the hobby to have sites like eBay around. eBay is the Beckett for the new era, it’s the real market. Today’s markets demand adaptability, to be flexible so in order to survive, you have to adapt or you will be disappear that’s why many hobby shops around the country are gone or migrated to on line business. Today’s collectors are grown people who actually do their research before buying some products, of course when it comes to go to your favorite hobby shop you will find some kind of extra value, friendly atmosphere, nice talking, first hand information, but business is business and nobody likes to be robbed or treated like a child. Besides that, people and some shop’s owners, must understand that Beckett is just a reference book not the constitution of the United States, sometimes you need just your feelings to realize when something is over priced or out of context and this is something neither MBA is gonna give you.
I find it hard to buy from somewhere that still heavily relies on book value. It’s been at least 5 years since I’ve cared at all about that nonsense.
Small shops are nice, but I’m a firm believer that more sales at lower prices work out better than few sales at high prices in the long run.
There are two shops in my town, one like you described that I never go to, and one which is excellent and I try to get to once a month. He knows the business in and out (was one of the good guys in Operation Bullpen) and he prices everything reasonably. For example his whole case of on card autographs (multi-sport) is priced at 50%. So I think the key is keep trying different card shops until you find a home base and then support them. I still surf Ebay and get good deals on a regular basis.
I support my local shop but this is also the guy that will do his best to compete with ebay for singles and has given me some great deals on boxes… i.e. 2008 UD Masterpieces 2 box for $140. He also has two huge displays of auto and jersey cards for $3 a pop and several shelves that state 50% off book value so he knows how to keep us coming in!
I wish I had a local shop to support, but if it was run like the one you visited I would pass. We had a shop here and there in the early days of Ebay but they are all gone now. My favorite shop in town was run by a guy named Mike and he never quoted me a price out of Beckett. Yes he had plenty of cards in cases with prices on them that were priced with Beckett in mind but not as the gold standard. But everything else he would just eyeball and price because he knew the market and his customers.
He had a competitor a few blocks away that priced every single card in the shop by Beckett. Unless it was a really hot card it was 65% of Beckett. I didn’t bother with his singles but instead I plowed through his cheap wax packs.
I would support a shop that fills the gap that Ebay cannot fill and prices their cards competively. I would not even darken the door of a shop like you described in your post.