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How much time, effort, cost and profit do you get from busting a case. For example say that you buy a case of XYZ cards for $1000. How many man hours, envelopes and postage, gas driving to the post office, etc do you spend working on it? After you pay for the expenses who much do you see back? What would that bread down per hour? I would like to bust a case one day but with me working a full time job and having other obligations would it even be time and cost efficent for me?
If you are looking to bust a case just to sell the cards you get, then what's the point in busting the case? I don't really understand your logic here. I understand selling the bigger hits, but why sell every single hit that you get? But if you look at an average case of cards such as UD hockey for example each box has 6 young guns and 2 game used cards. Multiply that by 12 boxes per case and you have a total of 72 young guns and 24 game used cards plus the other case hit autos and inserts so the total would be about 100 hits.
Average that out to about $2 per hit for shipping and you're looking at about $200 for shipping for that product depending on if you need to ship with tracking and what not.
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Busting the case is 90% of the part of buying the case in the first place. Well it should be at least. I am one of those few people that is in the hobby mostly for the joy of it, so busting packs, boxes is where I find the thrill and not selling my cards.
Yeah I really enjoy busting wax as well and if I get a "hit" it is really hard to sell/trade unless it is a duplicate or just something that I am not interested in. Due to financial reasons I mainly stick to lower end product and trade up for higher end cards or buy singles off the bay.
I am starting to get into the practice of buying cards on ebay for a potential profit, but my passion still lies towards busting wax b/c I will always be a kid at heart =)
Honestly, if financial reasons are causing you to stick to lower end products and buying singles from eBay then i would highly suggest you not buying a case. The chances that you will make a profit are slim anyway and tying up cash reserves for the length of time it might take you to sell all the cards IMO is not a good idea. Lets assume $100.00 per box 12 boxes per case. Now you MIGHT pull a great card and hit it big, more likely you won't. You might hit enough cards to make your money back and maybe even a bit of a profit but it might take you 6 months or more to sell the cards to make that money. Can you sit on $1200.00 for six months? Sure, buying a case increases the odds that you will get the better card but will that card be enough to offset the additional cost.Quote:
Originally Posted by mrveggieman
I understand the appeal of buying packs and boxes and cases but it is a gamble (that's part of the appeal) . I'm sort of a gambler myself but I will only gamble with money I can afford to lose (so no gambling for me for quite a while) If I had a lot of extra income I'd probably be busting boxes and cases just for the thrill and who cares if you make anything back. Gambling as a hobby can be fun. Gambling to make money is almost always a losing bet.
buying cards for a potential profit is a gamble as well but not quite so much. At least you know exactly what you are buying. Whether they increase in value or not is still a gamble but at least it is not a total unknown.
+1 for one your post Steve. The only way to make a profit in this hobby is to research and look for deals on ebay and then hope and pray you can find a bargain. I know this b/c I am doing this now and it is most definitely a chore and even after you find a decent deal, there is of course always the issue of actually selling the cards you win.