You need to already be well off or have a high paying job , period . The margins from buying Pokemon cards are super thin unless you can consistently buy at 70% . IMO social media whether it’s UA-cam , instagram or TikTok will be key to if you want to be full time Pokemon .
@@georgeallen4007 i mostly agree! You can definitely build something (relatively) impressive in a year starting with under 1k. But the full time guys i know, most make under 6 figures at it, have $50-500k of inventory at a time, and have been heavily involved or full time for years. I do think by and large, the ones who can get to a few hundred thousand NET in under a few years, have starting capital and social media followings. Not exclusively. But indeed mostly
@@oyamastradingmoral of the story is you need to have capital and then you have to work your balls off. grinding deals growing your social media presence. That’s why the clover brothers are so successful because they have it all dialed in to the tee .
Awesome video and thank you for the break down. Honestly it’s nice to temper the expectations around this because I feel like everyone is so glamorized by all you pokemon content thats around and it’s honestly not that easy to do! It’ll be fun, but lots of hard work.
@@TripleTeeCG 100% it is VERY possible to build into a business but it is for the most part like any business - most will fail, and most who succeed will need years to get there. For me, and for most.. I’m loving doing it on the side as a hobby that starts to fund itself!
Love this video! I gotta say you were one of my inspirations to pick up a camera and do buyer POV videos. Completely understand and going through this grind myself! Over 500+sales on tcgplayer in 2024. Biggest thing for me that helps me with sourcing online/recording shows, is that I actually enjoy it. I tell myself, if I enjoy this hobby with or without the camera on, then I can justify the time time and mental capacity.
@@R3zagronTCG thanks for sharing your experience! Totally share the same mentality. Even with a channel focused on buyer pov i recently went to a show with no equipment and enjoyed it at least as much as usual
Drpends on the person's situation for sure. Personally for me, I don't work a six figure job with ok benefits. I don't enjoy my full time work. I enjoy reselling and can see myself doing it full time. However before considering going full time, I'd rather look for a better job. Sometimes you just need a better job vs reselling full time. Tip courtesy of Pokene.
Love your videos man and I like that you mention Pokemon Steven, definitely lots of insight from that guy. I find that your decision in not making vending/selling your 100% is very sensible and resonates with me a lot. I love the pokemon hobby and I feel I would not want to turn it into this extremely aggressive selling machine that would make it less enjoyable.
I really appreciate this upload Ricky! Something that viewers like me can learn and understand how it would be to live as a TCG vender 😊 Very educational 🙏🏼 Thank you so much!!
This is a really solid breakdown of the short, mid, and long-term pros and cons of the business. I also think that it gives a very realistic snapshot of what it would take to "go full time." Especially today there is a deluge of content showing quick snippets of huge deals and lots of cash, and I think that appeals to people who think it might be easy to break in. I like your overall takeaway that it is both possible and potentially a good idea, but not an automatic "yes" for everyone.
this is such a great video. I would love to sell pokemon cards for a living. It might take a bit of the fun out of the hobby, but i'd much rather sell pokemon cards than do my current job working for a big corporation. I've gone to 4 card shows these past few months, and they were so much fun. currently just doing it as a side hustle and slowly growing inventory. perhaps one of these days i will get a table at one of the card shows and start selling. taking it slow and learning every day.
Pokémon Steven is good example for this as he has been selling Pokémon cards on eBay only for about 10 years I think he’s selling over $1 million dollars a year he sells mainly graded cards on his shop and his girlfriend sells raw cards on her eBay store . He doesn’t recommend quitting your job to sell cards full time because it puts a lot of stress on you to pay your bills but once you are at his level you can definitely quit your job.
i really like the breakdown you have here - i recently started getting into this sort of business around november 2024 and have around a 20% roi after expenses. thing is i started with a very small budget + had to spend MULTIPLE hours a day trying to understand ebay, shipping, and effectively sourcing cards. having capital helps with sourcing too but again, its that time aspect which affects everything as a whole. i definitely recommend as a hobby buying and selling here and there for fun though!!
@@charshilrivera2137 thanks for sharing your experience! Great to hear other examples that validate or even offer an alternative to what i share in this vid. I do think for most people it’ll play out like this. Possible, but a LOT of time and effort for pretty small return in that first 6-12 months grinding
Great video. ya I’ve definitely thought about this too. I’ve loved pokemon since 1999. And genuinely eat up videos of seeing people packing orders and doing deals. I currently work full time with great benefits and run my own media agency on the side so I know I would love the hustle. But when I see what some people are “making” I’m like, ya but how much of what you’re you’re making is going towards putting food on the table and your mortgage and paying for your bills 😅 knowing I’d have to make that PLUS the additional $30k MINIMUM to keep the business running. But I know I’ll get there one day! Just one day at a time with a risk and investment mindset 😆
Depending on where you live, it can also be a factor. I think in your case, even if you made like 150-200k a year from pokemon cards, you might not do it. I believe you value your security in your job + social life more than that, which is totally fine! I feel like its Pokemon is low risk to enter but it can become very dangerous if you want to scale up and bite more than you can chew. Taking out loans to quickly expand and take advantage of the market because "low risk" can put you at high risk. I do agree that people can start as low as 1k but realistically, 10k is a better starting point. People wont be able to see incredible gains without getting more money invested. Especially for long term hold. I would honestly advise people to actually to arbitrage if you want risk free cards/sealed products during this big pokemon boom. Grow your collection slowly and enjoy Pokemon as a hobbyist rather than full cut throat business. Have a small sealed collection, vend if you like, open cards for the thrill, and have fun! Shiny cardboard is awesome. Just my two cents.
Great insight into the business. I'm interested in selling on ebay. Question regarding how you price cards to sell on that platform. Lets say a psa 10 of a card is $100 on price charting and you picked it up at 80ish% like you mentioned in your previous video. How do you price cards taking into account fees, shipping and leaving room for profit yourself?
@@ll2759 depends. But after fees etc you should expect to make 85-6% of sale price. This is what makes ebay quite hard, margin can be small. The biggest advantage of ebay is it is so good at connecting a buyer of nearly anything, to a seller. Even fairly obscure items priced higher than recent sales has a good chance of *eventually* selling. These days I use eBay to quickly sell something that’s moving up in price quickly and I want to capitalize, or for less liquid things I bought inexpensively. I built a decent amt of ebay feedback and experience selling low end CGC slabs that I bought at like 60-70%. Just requires patience and you are ultimately still only making like $5-10 profit per item all told. But if you sell 10 items a day that can add up.
Great content, great channel-- curious whether or not you think more of the value in the pokemon card market [from the buying/ selling of cards; ignoring the streaming monetization component] is from solving market inefficiencies (e.g., matching buyers/sellers and capturing the 20-30% margin from that), if more of the value is from taking advantage of human psychology (e.g., ripping streams, gambling and auction streams where you're effectively getting people to overpay).
@@benjilin3004 this is a really hard question for me to answer. Like I just don’t feel qualified to answer it because I don’t play in the latter. But the simple fact of the matter is people LOVE to gamble. A majority of the bad financial decisions I see made on a daily in this hobby are gambling oriented, be it ripping packs, buying on streams, rip and ships, mystery packs, sending cards to grade before developing an understanding of what is even worth sending.. I suspect there’s more to make in the latter but I don’t think I intend to find out first hand. But again, this is a guess on my part.
@@oyamastrading Totally agree, a lot of the local card vendors around me that started out smaller scale, started really scaling quickly when they got into the latter-- has always left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth; but it's mostly anecdotal data; I'm not on the west coast, but hope to run across at a con somewhere someday!
@@chuongnguyen2630 whatcha mean? Like turning Pokemon into your work? It would definitely make it less fun than collecting and treating it strictly as a hobby, if that’s your point I completely agree! But as work goes I bet it’d be more fun than most jobs or businesses 💯
Thats what im afraid of if I’m putting my livelihood in buying and selling pokemon cards (or other hobbies). The collecting part will be less enjoyable, collection will only mean as inventory and numbers. Right now i am only buying and selling to cover my collection.
i enjoy the channel but commenting on what you assume people make isnt cool, your also very new in the game, personal opinion but stick to the show and rip content. your a salesman and you talk well use that
@@oyamastrading the comment where you replied to someone saying " But the full time guys i know, most make under 6 figures at it" there are plenty of people making far more and most are not youtubers. go hit some big shows at home and abroad. and to reiterate I am a fan of the content.
@ oh i see you didn’t mean in the video. And thanks for watching the channel! 🙏 You made an assumption that it’s an assumption. it’s a factual statement. I’ve spoken with people in my local vending and content creator scene about it, i just never include private conversations like that in the videos themselves. Sample size of about 6 so it’s not representative. But it’s not a guess or assumption!
@@oyamastrading that is pretty much my point you seem to be at very small local shows and I believe you said you had only been a vendor once or twice. my point is these are people who are doing it as a hobby and side hustle or like yourself starting out. You have it down and clearly research well and have discipline. Im also talking more on the business side less on youtube I have no clue on that.
You need to already be well off or have a high paying job , period . The margins from buying Pokemon cards are super thin unless you can consistently buy at 70% . IMO social media whether it’s UA-cam , instagram or TikTok will be key to if you want to be full time Pokemon .
@@georgeallen4007 i mostly agree! You can definitely build something (relatively) impressive in a year starting with under 1k. But the full time guys i know, most make under 6 figures at it, have $50-500k of inventory at a time, and have been heavily involved or full time for years.
I do think by and large, the ones who can get to a few hundred thousand NET in under a few years, have starting capital and social media followings. Not exclusively. But indeed mostly
@@oyamastradingmoral of the story is you need to have capital and then you have to work your balls off. grinding deals growing your social media presence. That’s why the clover brothers are so successful because they have it all dialed in to the tee .
Hey mate, great thorough presentation!
Alot of aspects covered, no sugar coating, realistic (honest figures and real business theory/struggles).
@@alextran8757 appreciate that - glad you enjoy
Awesome video and thank you for the break down. Honestly it’s nice to temper the expectations around this because I feel like everyone is so glamorized by all you pokemon content thats around and it’s honestly not that easy to do! It’ll be fun, but lots of hard work.
@@TripleTeeCG 100% it is VERY possible to build into a business but it is for the most part like any business - most will fail, and most who succeed will need years to get there.
For me, and for most.. I’m loving doing it on the side as a hobby that starts to fund itself!
Love this video! I gotta say you were one of my inspirations to pick up a camera and do buyer POV videos. Completely understand and going through this grind myself! Over 500+sales on tcgplayer in 2024. Biggest thing for me that helps me with sourcing online/recording shows, is that I actually enjoy it. I tell myself, if I enjoy this hobby with or without the camera on, then I can justify the time time and mental capacity.
@@R3zagronTCG thanks for sharing your experience! Totally share the same mentality. Even with a channel focused on buyer pov i recently went to a show with no equipment and enjoyed it at least as much as usual
Drpends on the person's situation for sure. Personally for me, I don't work a six figure job with ok benefits. I don't enjoy my full time work. I enjoy reselling and can see myself doing it full time. However before considering going full time, I'd rather look for a better job. Sometimes you just need a better job vs reselling full time. Tip courtesy of Pokene.
That’s all very fair and practical. Pokene speaks sense!
Love your videos man and I like that you mention Pokemon Steven, definitely lots of insight from that guy. I find that your decision in not making vending/selling your 100% is very sensible and resonates with me a lot. I love the pokemon hobby and I feel I would not want to turn it into this extremely aggressive selling machine that would make it less enjoyable.
@@wanderingtcg appreciate that! And agree Pokemon Steven is one of the 🐐s
@@oyamastrading Random question though, is your other hobby jiu-jitsu or a grappling based sport?
@ haha yes bjj purple belt. My left ear is flat
@@oyamastrading Yeah haha easily observable. Nice! Thats an awesome hobby man!
I really appreciate this upload Ricky! Something that viewers like me can learn and understand how it would be to live as a TCG vender 😊
Very educational 🙏🏼
Thank you so much!!
This is a really solid breakdown of the short, mid, and long-term pros and cons of the business. I also think that it gives a very realistic snapshot of what it would take to "go full time." Especially today there is a deluge of content showing quick snippets of huge deals and lots of cash, and I think that appeals to people who think it might be easy to break in. I like your overall takeaway that it is both possible and potentially a good idea, but not an automatic "yes" for everyone.
this is such a great video. I would love to sell pokemon cards for a living. It might take a bit of the fun out of the hobby, but i'd much rather sell pokemon cards than do my current job working for a big corporation. I've gone to 4 card shows these past few months, and they were so much fun. currently just doing it as a side hustle and slowly growing inventory. perhaps one of these days i will get a table at one of the card shows and start selling. taking it slow and learning every day.
@@alondo36 this is the way! Would be awesome to see you grow it to a place where it becomes possible without big risk!!
Great video man! Love the presentation and points covered.
@@erncollects means a lot coming from you big dawg 🤜🏼🤛🏼
Fantastic video, starting my vending journey this year. This is quite helpful.
@@SendItSeann good luck!!
Nice breakdown dude. Good video
Pokémon Steven is good example for this as he has been selling Pokémon cards on eBay only for about 10 years I think he’s selling over $1 million dollars a year he sells mainly graded cards on his shop and his girlfriend sells raw cards on her eBay store . He doesn’t recommend quitting your job to sell cards full time because it puts a lot of stress on you to pay your bills but once you are at his level you can definitely quit your job.
@@themaoriwolverine 100% i couldn’t be a bigger fan of Pokemon Steven!
I dont even want to quit my job to sell pokemon cards, but I found this super interesting / insightful! Solid video
i really like the breakdown you have here - i recently started getting into this sort of business around november 2024 and have around a 20% roi after expenses. thing is i started with a very small budget + had to spend MULTIPLE hours a day trying to understand ebay, shipping, and effectively sourcing cards. having capital helps with sourcing too but again, its that time aspect which affects everything as a whole. i definitely recommend as a hobby buying and selling here and there for fun though!!
@@charshilrivera2137 thanks for sharing your experience! Great to hear other examples that validate or even offer an alternative to what i share in this vid. I do think for most people it’ll play out like this. Possible, but a LOT of time and effort for pretty small return in that first 6-12 months grinding
I appreciate the rawness and the number crunching currently scaling up my business for 2025 hoping to triple what I did if not more what I have done.
Nice let’s go! I bet you can do triple if you stay consistent!
@ 💪💪💪 hell yeah brother
Great video. ya I’ve definitely thought about this too. I’ve loved pokemon since 1999. And genuinely eat up videos of seeing people packing orders and doing deals. I currently work full time with great benefits and run my own media agency on the side so I know I would love the hustle. But when I see what some people are “making” I’m like, ya but how much of what you’re you’re making is going towards putting food on the table and your mortgage and paying for your bills 😅 knowing I’d have to make that PLUS the additional $30k MINIMUM to keep the business running. But I know I’ll get there one day! Just one day at a time with a risk and investment mindset 😆
Depending on where you live, it can also be a factor. I think in your case, even if you made like 150-200k a year from pokemon cards, you might not do it. I believe you value your security in your job + social life more than that, which is totally fine!
I feel like its Pokemon is low risk to enter but it can become very dangerous if you want to scale up and bite more than you can chew. Taking out loans to quickly expand and take advantage of the market because "low risk" can put you at high risk. I do agree that people can start as low as 1k but realistically, 10k is a better starting point. People wont be able to see incredible gains without getting more money invested. Especially for long term hold.
I would honestly advise people to actually to arbitrage if you want risk free cards/sealed products during this big pokemon boom. Grow your collection slowly and enjoy Pokemon as a hobbyist rather than full cut throat business. Have a small sealed collection, vend if you like, open cards for the thrill, and have fun! Shiny cardboard is awesome.
Just my two cents.
Selling cards is a great way to supplement your regular income
@@tylertouchstone1140 totally agree! Or to make the hobby more sustainable / less risky financially.
What a legend💯
Great insight into the business. I'm interested in selling on ebay. Question regarding how you price cards to sell on that platform. Lets say a psa 10 of a card is $100 on price charting and you picked it up at 80ish% like you mentioned in your previous video. How do you price cards taking into account fees, shipping and leaving room for profit yourself?
@@ll2759 depends. But after fees etc you should expect to make 85-6% of sale price. This is what makes ebay quite hard, margin can be small.
The biggest advantage of ebay is it is so good at connecting a buyer of nearly anything, to a seller. Even fairly obscure items priced higher than recent sales has a good chance of *eventually* selling.
These days I use eBay to quickly sell something that’s moving up in price quickly and I want to capitalize, or for less liquid things I bought inexpensively. I built a decent amt of ebay feedback and experience selling low end CGC slabs that I bought at like 60-70%. Just requires patience and you are ultimately still only making like $5-10 profit per item all told. But if you sell 10 items a day that can add up.
I love what I do. I like to collect pokemon cards for fun.
Always a good day when Oyama uploads
Great content, great channel-- curious whether or not you think more of the value in the pokemon card market [from the buying/ selling of cards; ignoring the streaming monetization component] is from solving market inefficiencies (e.g., matching buyers/sellers and capturing the 20-30% margin from that), if more of the value is from taking advantage of human psychology (e.g., ripping streams, gambling and auction streams where you're effectively getting people to overpay).
@@benjilin3004 this is a really hard question for me to answer. Like I just don’t feel qualified to answer it because I don’t play in the latter. But the simple fact of the matter is people LOVE to gamble.
A majority of the bad financial decisions I see made on a daily in this hobby are gambling oriented, be it ripping packs, buying on streams, rip and ships, mystery packs, sending cards to grade before developing an understanding of what is even worth sending..
I suspect there’s more to make in the latter but I don’t think I intend to find out first hand. But again, this is a guess on my part.
@@oyamastrading Totally agree, a lot of the local card vendors around me that started out smaller scale, started really scaling quickly when they got into the latter-- has always left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth; but it's mostly anecdotal data; I'm not on the west coast, but hope to run across at a con somewhere someday!
3:00
Massive!
Love that shirt! Where’d you find it?
@@bluebanisters2889 at a local card show funny enough. I honestly forget the name of the company that was making them 😭
Where is that shirt from??
@@Pikckyy i got it at a card show! There’s no brand or tag on it so i honestly cant remember what the name of the maker was 😭
Great video bro, I asked you on insta about selling so this is very informative.
Would make it less fun as well imo
@@chuongnguyen2630 whatcha mean? Like turning Pokemon into your work?
It would definitely make it less fun than collecting and treating it strictly as a hobby, if that’s your point I completely agree!
But as work goes I bet it’d be more fun than most jobs or businesses 💯
@ yeah that. Don’t want to be like hey buy this card so I can pay my rent or whatever.
@@chuongnguyen2630 definitely increases the pressure on selling which would strip a lot of the joy in the hobby!
Thats what im afraid of if I’m putting my livelihood in buying and selling pokemon cards (or other hobbies). The collecting part will be less enjoyable, collection will only mean as inventory and numbers.
Right now i am only buying and selling to cover my collection.
@@goodies6744 this is the way I like to do it too! more sustainable and keeps it fun and mostly collecting focused
First
i enjoy the channel but commenting on what you assume people make isnt cool, your also very new in the game, personal opinion but stick to the show and rip content. your a salesman and you talk well use that
Thanks for your input! Which assumptions did I make about what other people make?
@@oyamastrading the comment where you replied to someone saying " But the full time guys i know, most make under 6 figures at it" there are plenty of people making far more and most are not youtubers. go hit some big shows at home and abroad. and to reiterate I am a fan of the content.
@ oh i see you didn’t mean in the video. And thanks for watching the channel! 🙏
You made an assumption that it’s an assumption. it’s a factual statement. I’ve spoken with people in my local vending and content creator scene about it, i just never include private conversations like that in the videos themselves. Sample size of about 6 so it’s not representative. But it’s not a guess or assumption!
@@oyamastrading that is pretty much my point you seem to be at very small local shows and I believe you said you had only been a vendor once or twice. my point is these are people who are doing it as a hobby and side hustle or like yourself starting out. You have it down and clearly research well and have discipline. Im also talking more on the business side less on youtube I have no clue on that.
Awesome video Riki! Everyday I dream about making the leap but at my current scale, it wouldn't even cover half of my mortgage🥲
@@KevinTCGG rooting for you to build it up to a place where you can reconsider the math seriously my man!!