Dealing The Cards

Friday October 16th, 2009 - Lake Villa, IL

My personal boot camp continues. Today I started getting my sports cards ready to sell and that’s going to be a major project. I bought out several collections in the last couple of years and I have way more inventory than I need or want right now. It was a mistake.

Things were different when I bought them and I had planned to hang on to them for at least a while and maybe do some card shows while on the road doing comedy shows. It’s a wonderful idea on paper but in the real world it’s not going to work out that way at all.

I’m not the first person to make a large stupid purchase and I won’t be the last. One of the best ones I ever heard of was from my friend Rick Geiser who does publicity work for Zanies and other people too. He’s helped me many times over the years and I’m grateful.

When I was on a morning radio show in Salt Lake City, Rick sent me a press release of a book written by a friend of his called ‘101 Uses For A Dead Cat’ or something like that. If that’s not the exact title it’s close enough to get across the point of what kind of product he was promoting. I thought I owed Rick a favor so I agreed to put the author on the air.

Actually he was a fine interview and we had fun with it. I can usually milk a few laughs out of a radio guest if they are at all engaging and this guy was as I remember. It felt good to help both Rick and the guy out but Rick told me later the guy’s whole world got wiped out from this project because he had some ungodly amount of books printed, like 10,000.

On top of that, I think he had them stored in his garage and his wife wasn’t thrilled with it and eventually they got a divorce over it. We’ve all made a rotten purchase in our lives but that was the cake taker. I feel bad for the guy because I know he thought he had a big winner when he wrote it or he wouldn’t have pulled the trigger and printed that many.

My situation is a little different, or at least I hope it is. There are still people who collect sports cards and I have quite a bit of inventory, both old and new. I don’t have time to put into setting up at card shows to make my profit over a period of time so my first choice is to sell it as a lot to some dealer or even collector and get it over with, but that’s a stretch.

Not many collectors are going to want such a varied mix of stuff and not many dealers I know have the money to score it all at once. Those who do will try to chisel me down and steal it but I’m not going to let that happen. I’ll sell it at a fair price but I won’t be raped.

This is all part of the game of life. We take chances and try things that sound very good at the time but then not too long after we realize it was complete stupidity. I’m not so sure it was completely stupid, but I’d rather have the money instead. Too late. I bought them.

Now I have to find a way to recoup my investment and move on. The first step in that is sorting and organizing all of it, and there‘s quite a load. After that I can start looking for a buyer. Someone will buy them. I did. This will be a very valuable entrepreneurial lesson.