Wednesday, July 22, 2015

Liquidating sportscards.

Sports cards haven't been holding their own for years now.  But they are stackable -- that is, I can put a lot of material in a small space, and space in the store is a premium, so I figured I might be able to make it work.  The idea has been to slowly sell the backstock, buy it at sale prices as often as possible, and put a bit of money into new cards each year.  Just keep it going.

Part of it, I think, is that I'm just stubborn.  Sports cards at one point were 85% of revenue.  Yes, you read that right, 85%.

When it went bad, it went bad quickly and permanently.  Like 25 years ago.

It's a completely dysfunctional industry.  People who hope that it will someday come back are kidding themselves.

The profit margins are laughable.  The Suggested Retail Price is about 15 to 20% above cost, or less than half just about anything else in my store.  I put them at about 10% higher than that, and explain to card customers that I simply can't carry them otherwise.

Well, last Thursday I had two sports card customers who were a "problem."  Unpleasant.

That was it.  I decided it was time to pull the plug.

So all sports cards (and non-sports cards since I'm eliminating the racks too) are going to be 50% off until they are gone.

This does not include 'game cards' like magic.

It's finally time to move on.

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