Never Say This to a Dealer When Buying Sportscards

Never say this to a dealer at a card show if you're trying to buy cards because if you say this one thing, they're going to know that you don't know what you're doing and that means that they can take advantage of you. Don't be that person. Don't let someone manipulate you like that and you're doing it to yourself. Now, I'm going to go over the one thing that you should never say to a dealer. But before we get into that, I want to explain why this is so important. And kind of through this video, I'm going to explain how we ourselves actually selfbrainwash ourselves into this problem. Because when you hear what I have to say, you're all going to go, "Oh, damn. That's what I do. And why do I do that?" And it's it's going to make sense by the time the end of the video, but here is the one thing that you should never ever say to a dealer. Hey, welcome back to the channel. My name is Doc. If you're new here, I am trying to build this channel into something that helps you in the hobby. I'm a former sports journalist. I'm also a sports dealer from back in the day, back in the 80s. Uh from the age of 13 to 18, I did shows every single weekend in Pennsylvania, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York. So I have a lot of stuff and so I've been getting rid of things because I'm a recovering card hoarder and over the last decade I have sold 7 and a half million items. Um so I know a lot about selling and if I'm going to do a video uh about all the top 10 things that I say and one of them is selling is hard, buying is easy. But here's the one thing you should never say to a dealer. All right? So, I'm going to say it and then I'm going to go over it, and that is that the cards are only worth what someone will pay for it. The minute you say the cards are worth what someone else will pay for it, the dealer knows I have a sucker on my hands. And that's why I want people to like kind of come back to this channel. And I'm trying to restrategize this channel so that it's more helpful to people. One of the problems that we have in this hobby is that the new people that come in get brainwashed with this mantra. People are coming in going, "The cards are only worth what someone will pay for them." And so when they go to eBay comps, they're looking at the last couple sales and going, "Well, other people paid X, therefore I should pay X." And that's the mistake. That's not how you comp cards. That's just not how you comp cards. And I've done a whole bunch of videos, probably three or four on how you actually find the value, the real value of cards. Go back into the archive and watch those. Uh, and if you have questions, put them down in the comments because that's the whole point of this channel is to help people watching this do better in the hobby. And doing better just means collecting the cards you want, not overpaying too much for them, enjoying this hobby the way it's meant to be. Now, here's the reason why that's the worst thing that you can say to anyone that you're trying to buy cards from. Uh, it's because you're doing self-braining. When you repeat this mantra over and over again, the cards are only worth what someone will pay for them. That means that you don't know what the cards are actually worth. Now, I know that may not seem like a big deal, like, well, but no, but they're only worth what someone will pay for. No, no, no, no. Stop saying that. Stop repeating that in your brain because you are conditioning yourself to then allow the dealer to then position the price so that you believe, well, everyone else is paying this, therefore I should as well. And the truth is that's not true. You're just being fooled into thinking that you paid market price when the market price may be lower than you realize. Now, I have an example. I'm going to show you this card. My top cards, I I love the card, but I overpaid for it. So, I bought this Simply Supreme. This is a Jacob Deg Grom uh rookie rookie auto. Not a patch. There's no patch. It's just an auto. Um, and I paid $1,500 for this card. Now, that was back in 2021 at the height of the bubble. And this card is not worth $1,500. It's probably worth around $8 to $900. That's basically what I can figure out. So, I overpaid a lot in terms of my own kind of dollar cost dollar analysis more than I normally overpay for cards. Like I overpay for cards, you know, maybe like 20, 30 bucks. Like I don't have a problem with that. But this is several hundred more, almost double what I what it's worth. And so the question becomes, well, why did that happen? It's because I didn't actually know what the real value of that card was. And so when I paid for it, I thought I was getting a good deal, but I didn't really know. Now, I will say that I'm not upset that I have it because this card does not come up on eBay ever. I haven't seen one in several years. So, since I bought it, I've never seen one online, and I certainly haven't seen, again, that's the blue version. I haven't seen that in any shows that I've been to. So, if you've seen that card, please put it down in the comment. Be like, "Hey, I saw that card, Doc, at this show at this time." um because there's just not that many of them and so I overpaid but I have it I have it on my display because it's one of the cards that I really like. Anyway, that's what you have to make a decision. But stop saying the card is only worth what someone will pay for it because that tells everyone else that you can be manipulated. So, let's talk about this manipulation piece and why we like to kind of self-brainwash ourselves in this hobby because there's a lot of things that we're doing to ourselves that is not good for you. It's just not good. This is a hobby. These are collectibles. You should be paying for stuff that you actually want. You should not be chasing after stuff. You should not have this fear of being left out, the FOMO. Um, you should not be gambling. I understand there's a lot of pressure that, oh, I should get into breaks if I want these types of cards. To be quite honest, you're probably never going to get some of the cards that you want. It's just not going to happen. You're going to have to spend a ton of money to get a card. That means you're going to spend more money than you actually get in card value. And that's the way this this hobby is now set up. It's an industry. It's set up to suck your money out and make you feel like that you can never catch up. And if you're a you're someone who's trying to actually make money in this industry, in this hobby, then you really need to know your numbers and you need to know what the cards are actually worth. That's why you need to stop saying the card is worth what someone will pay for it because that's just not true. So, let's get into this brainwashing piece. So, when you say the card is worth what someone will pay for it, that means that you are anchoring your brain in what other sales are, like you're just going, "Well, then let me just see what someone will pay for it." And and that's a problem because that's that's only part of the story because like here's the perfect example. So, Mr. Wonderful, uh Kevin Olri from the Shark Tank bought the dual logo man MJ Kobe uh Bryant card, right? So that's the and it it's graded like a PSA 8, I think, maybe even a PSA 6. Again, grading a one of one makes no sense to me, but there you go. I don't understand. Anyway, he paid almost $13 million for it. He's running around Wall Street saying it's worth 25 million. Again, he bought it like a year ago. There's no physical way that a card jumped in value double in one year. It's just not doesn't happen unless there's a scam going on. So, whatever. And not only that, but Mr. Wonderful paid double what every expert said the card was worth. People said the card should probably go around 7 million. He paid 13 million and now he wants to say it's worth double that. So, in other words, in two years, the card has quadrupled in price. Again, folks, you know, if you're thinking clearly, that makes no sense. There's no card in the history of cards that has ever quadrupled in two years. And that's not the best card in the hobby. We all know what the best card is. That's the 52 mano. And I'm sorry, it just doesn't work that way. So, that's why you have to stop brainwashing yourself with this mantra. The card is worth what someone will pay for it. No, that's not true because some people don't know what cards are worth. That's why I keep bringing this stuff up. I paid $1,500 for this card. You should not pay $1,500 for this card. At least right now, it's not worth 1,500. What should you pay if you really want it? You if you wanted to pay up, it's a,000 bucks because it's worth between 8 to 900 at least from what I can tell. Therefore, if you paid a thousand, yes, you'd be paying more, but that means you put it in your collection and you're just like, I got it, but it's only a couple hundred bucks more. If you paid 1,500, you'd be severely overpaying for that card. And that's the point. I paid 1,500. So, the comp is 1,500. And I'm telling you, this ain't the comp. That's why it's not worth what someone will pay for it. there is an actual value to the card. And so you have to look into the market yourself because all of the apps, and I'm not going to name them because I don't want to get sued, but all of the apps that do pricing are all wrong. They work on the assumption that they can do an average of all the sale prices. And that's a problem. That is a real problem because that means they bake in all the shill bidding. They bake in all of the scams. They bake in all of the fools that don't know anything about cards that are overpaying hundreds and hundreds of dollars for cards. And you're like, "What the heck is going on?" If there's one thing that always happens in this hobby is that it always repeats itself. And we're doing the exact same thing that we did back in the 80s and 90s during the Junk Wax era. Doing exact same thing. People are overpaying for cards at the beginning of a player's career. And the only thing that's happening is those card values have to come down. Mike Trout is the best example. His rookie card was worth thousands and thousands of dollars and it's on a steep decline. He won three MVPs. Everybody keeps telling me he's a first ballot hall of famer. Well, if that's the case, why is his rookie card coming down? If that's the case, why is his rookie card coming down? So if you're buying show Otanis right now for thousands and thousands of dollars, guess what folks in the future all of those price values have to come down. It's just the way it's going to be. And and I can already predict that because the prices are running up too quickly in the beginning. The reason the mantle card is worth millions and millions of dollars is because it went like this. It was a hockey stick. You can't have a hockey stick that starts at $50,000 and then like it just doesn't work that way. It has to start low and then build momentum up. That's how assets work. It starts low and then goes hockey stick. If you don't follow that curve, you should know there's a problem. And that's the piece. The reason why everybody believes the cards worth what someone will pay for is because all of the older cards reached a critical mass where a lot of people wanted to buy them and that started to drive the price up. Demand leads the market. So like the the 1989 Upper Deck Ping Griffy rookie card. So everybody wanted that card back in the day. It was the hottest card. Literally the hottest card. And so it went beyond what the Becket Guide ever said it was. The Becket Guide, I think, topped out at like 150 bucks. I was selling them for 200. And I know dealers that were selling them for 400. Now, they didn't sell a lot 400 because people were like, "That's crazy." You know, that's just too much money. Again, back in 1989 and 1990, $400 for a card that had just come out was literally insane. Especially since you could have bought, you know, any one of the mantels, not a not a rookie mantle, but any of the other mantels for $3 $400. So, it's like, can I buy a mantle or a Ken Griffy Jr.? I'm going to buy the mantel. Like, if you were smart, that's what you did. And I have 12 mantels in my collection. And because I just had all of them and all the money that I was making, I was putting into older vintage cards. Now, I didn't get every card that I wanted. There were there are definitely key cards that just were out of my reach back even back then and they're certainly out of my reach at this point because I'm just not willing to put down 89 $10,000 for a baseball card. It's just not in my mind frame, you know, like let's just put it that way. That's not my mindset. I would rather deploy that kind of money into something that's a lot more, I guess, safer as an asset class. Like I'd probably buy, you know, an ounce of gold before I would buy a baseball card for $5,000. It's probably a better bet. And that's the piece you should realize that this is a collectible. Yes, it has value. Yes, it can go up in value, but please keep in mind that it's still just a collectible. And that's the piece. This should be about fun, not about, you know, trying to to score a big win. Because if you get into this getrich quick scheme of baseball cards or Pokemon or TCG, you're going to nine times out of 10 you're going to get hurt. That's just the way it is. The odds are against you if you do that. Now, if you can deploy now, again, if you have extra cash, if you have disposable income and you want to spend it on sports cards, absolutely this is a great hobby and you can make money doing it. There's a lot of people that go from show to show to show all across the country and they make a decent living. Now, are they making a million dollars a year? No. The social media influencers are, but they're not making it on sports cards. Like, you know, unfortunately, Jeff Wilson has to have a shop in order to make, you know, let's say he's making, you know, a million dollars a year on his shop. But that's because he has to have a shop. But he also had to sink in millions of dollars into that business. So how much money has he actually cleared? Like how much of his original investment has he actually made back? That you will never know because he will never disclose that to you. So when he gives you his numbers, he's giving you present tense numbers. Let's say, so he spends, let's say, $15 million a year on product and he makes 16 or 17 million on on sales. So that's a $2 million profit, right? Okay. Well, some of that money has to go back into the business, so it's not going into his pocket. He also has two partners, so they get paid and he gets a salary. So, and then you have also the, you know, the operating costs of of the business. So, all of those things, and you have taxes. You can't forget taxes either. So all of those things start to eat into that profit margin. So it's really not profit at the end of the day. It's with all of those expenses. Then you bring it back out with all of these social media influencers that put up, you know, hey, you can go to the dollar bin and you buy a card for a dollar and you sell it for five. Again, the card is worth what someone will pay for it. Not really because most of those cards you can't sell unless you have an a buying audience. So that's where these social media influencers have an advantage over the average collector because they have someplace to go to sell the cards. But you guys, when you watch them, this is why I want you to subscribe to this channel, cuz I want you to start doing this hobby in a better way, in a healthier way for you. I it it's no skin off my back. If you want to spend thousands and thousands of dollars, do it. That's that's your choice. But don't get upset when you lose out because you're like, "Oh, I didn't get the cards that I wanted to get." This doesn't need to be a gambling thing. You can buy the cards you want. You can enjoy this hobby. Again, if you haven't seen the video, the five cards you should keep for life and never sell. You should absolutely watch. That's my most popular video and that's the best advice that I can give for anybody that wants to stay in this hobby long term. You should start picking out the five cards that mean the most to you and put them on your bookshelf. Those are the cards that you will never ever sell. And then the rest of it, you have to really figure out why are you holding on to these cards? Like why are you attached to them? Why are you not selling them? Why are you not giving them away to your nieces, nephews, grandkids? Why are you holding on to them like they're, you know, the Magna Carter or like they're the first edition of the Bible? like they're not that valuable. They're not that valuable. Most of my audience does not have milliondoll cards. There are million-dollar cards in the hobby, but you guys don't have them. I don't have that audience. I don't have that big an audience. So, most of you guys have cards that maybe top out at like $10,000 or $15,000 each. That's it. Now, I just got u a whole bunch of these things on Amazon. and I love them. These are the onetouch for tobacco cards because I had a conversation with Jeremy Lee who wrote a book uh Pops and Comps. Um we're going to put out that interview uh in a in a few weeks probably. I'm trying to figure out how to to like break it up so that it's an interesting interview for you guys. But one of the things we talked about is how the grading companies is is really a scam for you if you send them in. He actually gave a really good point which is that if you buy graded cars on the secondary market, especially PSA, you get the insurance policy. And the reason that PSA upcharges the cards to the person who sends them in is because they're mitigating the insurance policy to you if you buy it in the secondary market that they actually uh graded either a counterfeit card or they graded the card wrong. That means that if they reconsider it or pull it back, let's say recall it, like if it's a fake card, they have to pay you back the money that you spent. And that's called an insurance policy. And so that's why this whole thing is like a shadowy, you know, network because PSA is not being totally honest with the person who sends the card in. Like you're getting upcharged for what? You're not getting the insurance policy because you're not getting paid whole. You're not going to make that money back. It's when you go to sell it on the secondary market, the person who buys it is getting a PSA guarantee that that card is authentic and it's the grade that it's supposed to be. And so if you figure out it's not it's a counterfeit or it's not the right grade and you send it back like let's say the you know the um the T206 Honus Wagner that originally was f you know got a high you know grade it was like a 10 and then it was found to be trimmed and then they put it back to an eight. Well, whoever bought that card at the time, now I don't know if it was still Gretzky and McNall, but basically if they bought the card, then PSA owed them several hundred,000 because it was no longer worth what it was. Now, obviously, that's probably a bad example because it it became worth more than what they paid for it anyway. So, PSA technically wouldn't really owe them any money again depending on the time frame. But see, this is the problem is so should you be grading your cards or not? So, I'm going to show you the two cards and how they look in the in the one-touches. And there you go. I mean, they look pretty damn good now. I don't I don't have any worry about the condition of these cards anymore. And that's the whole reason that I was going to get them graded. Um, this card, this is the Christy Mat. It's worth around $1,000 or so. Again, depending on what it would grade, um I don't know. My guess is this would maybe be a two, potentially even a three, which means it's worth probably a couple grand. Um and then this one is a Frank Chase um uh sorry, Chance. Um this is from the Cubs uh triple play combination, Tinkers to Evers to Chance or the double play combination, sorry, Tinkers to Ever Chance. So, those are my two best T206s. Again, got those back in the in the early 90s. Um, but anyway, that's my point is that if I sent them in, uh, I'm going to get upcharged. I'm going to especially for this one because it'll be worth more. Um, so I'm going to pay more for grading. And I'm like, but why do I want to grade it? These are part of my collection. These are the cards I'm not selling. So, why am I grading cards that I'm not going to sell? like why am I giving the grading company money for cards that I'm not selling? That's what I want you guys to start thinking about. All of these different pieces. Start thinking for yourself. So, if you're not selling cards, why are you grading them? If you are not selling cards, why are you holding on to them? And why are you not just picking out five cards, putting them on your bookcase, and saying those are the cards that mean the most to me? And stop saying the cards are only worth what someone will pay for them because that's not actually true. People will pay a ton of money for stuff when they think something's going on. And again, that's it that happens in the housing market, happens in the stock market, happens with sports cards and Pokemon cards and TCG. Somebody paid $16 million for a Pokemon card and it's not worth $16 million. So, is the card worth what someone will pay for it? No. That's the point. The card is not worth what someone will pay for it. If you believe that and you keep saying that over and over in your brain, you are actually brainwashing yourself. And that's what I want you guys to stop doing. So, that's the one thing you should never ever say to someone that you're buying cards from because then they know, oh, all I need to do, like when I hear it, all I need to do is just figure out, okay, well, then I need to convince you that everybody's paying X and I can get more than what the actual card is worth. Because you're going to go, absolutely, the card is worth what someone will pay for it, and I just saw what people are paying. Therefore, I have no problem paying top dollar. In fact, I have no problem overpaying for the card. Don't be that person. Don't let someone manipulate you like that. And you're doing it to yourself. Anyway, thanks for joining me. Hopefully, I'll see you soon. Hit the subscribe button. [music] This is Doc saying I'll see

If you are trying to get a good deal on sportscards, then you should know you should NEVER say this to a dealer, otherwise they will know that you don't know what you're doing and they can take advantage of you. And i see this happen all the time, so thats why I wanted to make this video. ** Subscribe to the High End Cards Newsletter If you want to know more about High End Cards and which cards will be worth more in the future, then you should subscribe to this newsletter "High End Card" https://highendcards.substack.com ** Card Addiction?? If you or someone you know suffers from card addiction, tell them about Collectors MD, a free support group for people who need more support with overspending on cards, breaks and wax. https://collectorsmd.com/ ** Have a Story For Me?? ** If you have any news or information about the hobby you think people should know about, then get in contact with me on Instagram: Instagram: https://instagram.com/edisportscards