For business inquiries you can contact me at Email: Ruffainquiries@gmail.com I am a 24 year old sports card collector and enthusiast, I am going to be creating content about anything to do with sports cards, whether that be pack opening of sports cards, informational / educational videos on topics in the sports card industry, or even some new and unique ideas that I have in mind. I am hoping to release a new long form video every 2 days! My plan is to post content regarding my journey selling sports cards, and teaching as many people as possible how to do the same.
@@asalcards715 Uhmm probably not this exact stuff, but certainly stuff like it if not better in some instances forsure. There will be some of it im guessing, I made this video like 2-3 weeks back just kind of catching up on my back logged content
I’ve never actually set up at a card show, I’m actually setting up at my first ever card show at the end of September :) hoping that it’s good since it’s the first time this particular show is running 😅
@@ruffasportscards I will be at that show. I did that show last time it was there and I was crazy busy. I was on the TCG side with a few other sports card vendors and it was great.
You mentioned in your film the other youtube that has the asian lady. She always films at my table she is super nice. I have the Green B on my one touches if you go back and check out some of her videos. I have to thank her one of these days because she will come to my table and video tape it and I didn't know what it was for until I saw your video. I do bargain bins too so if you go to cow palace or the next concord show Ill be there too. I have a small amount of bargain bins, but good stuff.
@@dudesupreme It’s the first time this card show is running; It’s gonna be in Redding for the last weekend of September. It’s a one day show, and the first time it’s ever been hosted. :)
@dudesupreme I don’t ever remember mentioning an Asian lady. Might be thinking of a different person, I can’t really think of anyone I would have talked about.
Nice :) if you want to message me on Instagram then I’d be interested potentially in hearing what your asking price is. My Instagram is RuffaSportsCards
Thank you for your support! Glad to have you apart of the journey :) I appreciate you very much and I hope you enjoy more videos that I upload in the future
@@jarralcarr5793 I think after a certain point, if the card is presented in a toploader and I’m guessing a good majority you’ve bought the card has had a toploader to begin with, I wouldn’t recommend removing Toploaders unless if absolutely necessary. If you are shipping plain white envelope with tracking then yes I would say you could and should remove all the Toploaders when possible, a lot different when selling thick cards. Gotta get the margins up if removing Toploaders does enough to help save you on margins!
Do you ship Ebay standard envelope? Do you ship in a top loader or a card saver? The majority, if not all, cards that you buy at shows are in top loaders of all different sizes, so why you bitchin’?????
All cards were shown to be in top loaders when I purchased them? If I say a number it’s because I expect the cards to be shipped the way I see them. When I get a card from a card show, it is being sent out in that toploader!?!? I don’t just happen to multiply the amount of Toploaders I have on hand because I purchase cards at a card show? I send every single card out that I can in a Toploader, if I’m not able to send it in a Toploader then yes I send it in a card saver. I don’t remove Toploaders to stockpile Toploaders. The only times that I ship with card savers are when selling on whatnot or if selling on eBay and the person purchases more than 2 cards. I think it’s a lot different when spending $40 and $120 on deals that were presented in Toploaders than if someone purchases with the cheapest shipping possible. Also the only real ones I was bummed about were the thicker Toploaders, because at the time of recording this I had literally none.
I just buy ultra toploaders in bulk, 1000 at a time. Most of the thicker cards are usually good in 60 point top loaders but sometimes you will need 100 point toploaders for the memorabilia cards and they are not super common so I usually will have around 50 extra toploaders for the thicker cards. It's rare you will need anything bigger unless you are opening really high end product.
Thank your for your comment, yes I am going to start having some stashed away. I I buy the regular sized Toploaders in bulk, just don’t see much reason to have the bulk purchase for the thicker Toploaders since I won’t be using so so many, but the shipping costs for such a small amount of Toploaders is what makes it cost ineffective to just purchase a small amount online.
@@ruffasportscards Might be worth waiting till Black Friday/Cyber Monday. When I first started buying bulk I went and bought the cheapest toploaders on eBay cause I figured they didn't all need to be the super clear ones that you get from Ultra Pro... Was a mistake, I recommend staying away from the cheapest bulk. I bought toploaders that were marketed for 35pt cards which is pretty much the standard for Ultra Pro regular toploaders... they ended up being more like 22pt toploaders which is great for Score cards but all of the other sets it was very difficult to fit the card in the toploader.
Yes but I know what I’m getting into when I do that, all of these cards were displayed in Toploaders when I purchased them and this was how I got the mail day, I say numbers based off what I am presented and looking at and expect to be shipped. If not I would have definitely offered lower or cover the cost of the Toploaders.
For me when i ship when people buy frol me on whatnot, if people buy 1 or 2 cards they are ALWAYS shipping in toploaders. If people buy many, to save on shipping weight and packaging i bookend 2 cards in toploaders and the cards in the middle of the tema bag arent not toploaded.
Yes that was the shipping method that was used here, I was not worried about the safety or protection of the cards. Just more or less bummed out because I saw every single card be presented in Toploaders, and offered amount of money thinking that the cards would be shipped the way they were presented to me, if not I would have offered lower.
People won't pay any more for shipping so for the sake of avoiding less selling or transactions sometimes it's what must be done. If someone buys enough for me to fit into a bubble mailer all toploaded then it's easier and faster to mail them toploaded, if not then I do what I mentioned befroe..because I DO know people don't want to pay MORE for the cards or for the shipping
@AdultArtsAndCraftssportscards yes, I have adapted the plain white envelope with tracking service quite plentiful so that’s now the only real time that I do send cards not in their Toploaders. It just ergonomically makes no sense for me to send them out in Toploaders it would take too long and also it would cause more issues for both me and the buyer, since the order of pwe for cards are ridiculed by some more easily than the ones in bubble mailers
If the people you are buying from should have a huge stock of random top loaders…shouldn’t you as well??🤔 not much of a point you are trying to make here 😂.
I don’t remove my thicker toploader cards when shipping them, I don’t remove as many cards as possible from Toploaders. There’s a difference when buying lots online and being presented cards.. especially thick cards.. in Toploaders and then not receiving 98% of them in Toploaders. I have no worry with the smaller Toploaders, those I have a stockpile of. The thicker Toploaders of random sizes, I did not have a stockpile of at the time of recording this. I was saying we should probably all have a stockpile of the regular size Toploaders at this point, those are easily available and make sense for all card collectors to have since a lot of the majority of cards can fit in this size. The thick Toploaders with random sizes you have absolutely no way of identifying what size you’ll need in the future, I would not expect everyone to have a stockpile of. It’s also extra costs, I say a number because every single card was presented a certain way in Toploaders.
The cards were presented to be in Toploaders, yea I wasn’t so much worried about the regular size Toploaders, those I have a good stockpile of. The random size thicker Toploaders add a lot of extra expenses that you need in order to actually sell and get the money you were expecting out of a bulk deal.
@@ruffasportscards I would reach out to seller and ask why he didn’t send what was shown in listing. If it was on eBay, I would request a refund that will cover the top loader cost. Unless description said cards may not ship in top loaders.
@johnnym415-rn3ct yea a partial refund would’ve been nice, it was a direct sale via discord, I did another deal with them so I’m hoping the second deal and this one just do better than what I was expecting. Not super worried about it, just wanted to have a call to action in the video
I’ve sent hundreds of orders with no top loaders. If you buy a bulk lot from me of 20-30 cards for $10 you’re not getting top loaders bud lol. I’m not giving the shit away from free. 30 top loaders are $4/5. I put them in penny sleeves then in a team bag and then between two sheets of cardboard and they will be just fine when you get them.
It’s a lot different scenarios you are talking about here. My situation is spending $120 on cards and all those cards were presented in Toploaders. I have no worry or issue of sending the regular size cards without Toploaders. I think we can all agree we should all have a stockpile of those Toploaders, they are easily and readily available and we all use them so much as card collectors it doesn’t make much sense to not have them. If I purchased 20-30 cards for $10 I would NOT expect them to be shipped in Toploaders. If I’m spending $120 on a deal I kind of hope that the cards that are miscellaneous sizes of thickness would be shipped in their toploaders and not taken out for the person buying to figure out. I don’t care about the regular size Toploaders, again those are so easily and readily available, it’s still a bummer and something I wanted to bring up incase anyone ever wants to sell to me that finds my videos. If I expect to spend less money, I can offer more money. If I have to spend more money, I have to offer less money. That’s the point of this video. If I’m getting an absolute steal on a bulk deal of cards in the 20-30+ card range and not paying shipping on top of it. I am not going into the purchase thinking oh yea I’m gonna get all those cards in Toploaders. Even If they are thicker cards I would not expect that. When spending so much money, I kind of hope that they don’t remove cards from Toploaders, especially the thick ones.
I would always always always recommend to ship the thicker cards in the Toploaders when possible. If not card savers do the trick just fine. The cards were protected very much so with a toploader sandwich, protection of the cards wasn’t the issue I wasn’t even worried about them being damaged or anything the way they were packaged up. If I’m getting paid $120 I am most definitely not removing cards from Toploaders. On my whatnot streams every single card ships in a protective measure, e.g. Toploaders, card savers, one touch, slabs, ect. If they have bubble mailer with tracking shipping unless if I state otherwise. If I present a card in a toploader I am not removing that card from its toploader unless if they expect the cheapest shipping possible which is pwe w/ tracking services like standard envelope or first class mail letter for whatnot.
Yea it was Darth Vader pretty sure, or it was the Mandalorian with Grogu; if you’re interested in seeing those two lots I picked up, I didn’t include them in this video because I showcased them in my $1 to $10,000 only buying and selling sports cards challenge :)
@@mattscardshop appreciate you! Yea that Chet was an amazing deal, surprising on the last comp of it, not sure what happened if the person needed money or if someone just wanted to lower the comp heard that’s been happening on other peoples videos. Honestly my friend who got me into sports cards is a huge Thunder fan, so he told me to look for rare OKC stuff just to even show him photos of them. I was having a slow show so I was like might as well try to spot some rare Thunder stuff. Saw the sticker price and I was just so confused how it was that low of a price. I’ve realized I buy so many cards and deals that I need to do the post it note pricing 😂😅 or else by the time I get back and settled I forget what deal was what and where that card belonged to price wise all that. I just put them in boxes like 2 rows and 3 rows ect. and the post it note with prices act as a natural separation for the deals I’ve done 🙂 super useful
I was just letting you know why I happened to be talking so much and out of it at points 😂 no need to worry, it was a great conversation and I’ve done that to myself plenty of times.
Hey James! I went to Burbank a few weeks back to look at their $2 bin. It was mostly the same cards as my visit last year. They do not change their inventory much. Also, the cards are mostly late 90s to mid 2000's. I certainly hope to hear your voice again at a card show soon!
He’s been hyping up the new location a lot online! I might end up waiting until some people confirm or deny that the value bins are actually as good as he is hyping them up to be then, or maybe I’ll just wait and see for myself, if anything I just go down there after the grand opening with low expectations and just doing it for myself, maybe just to experience what Burbank is about and the idea of doing something big, it would be a great for content and all that still hopefully :) I appreciate your support as always! Add me on Instagram, my username is RuffaSportsCards 🙂 I’ll update you on when will be my next card show that way in direct messages there :)
i have about 1k sales and i never start anything at $1 ever. $1 sales are not worth my time, if i start anything cheap its always at $2 starts and i do just fine. sellings things for $1 isnt even worth my toploaders and shipping supplies so id rather just keep the card at that point
I am considering starting them at $2 I’ve just realized I get higher on some cards than I would if ran everything at $2. Like some cards I think might not even sell would get $3 but if I run them at $2 they won’t sell. I agree though it is rough to sell the $1 cards and get .57 after fees and all that, but I think I get higher viewer counts, higher average sales, and more retention also. Idk I ran a bunch of card starting at $2 tonight and it was like I still had cards go for absolute steals because I didn’t have the eyes and or the people interested I usually do because of the attractive $1 starts. I didn’t realize it was school starting back up that made it a rough night selling, but yes it’s definitely something I’ve experimented with, you might cover yourself a little more here and there, but you might also nip yourself in the butt also. Plus you also might be limiting and restricting the actual quality of inventory that you’re able to actually sell because now you have the higher premium of it being $2 cards instead of $1
@@ruffasportscards I view it as time is money, yes the difference of starting at 1 sounds cool but I’m not in the business of taking a loss on stuff if I’m selling it as a single card, obviously lots can be adjusted to give value but singles I start at $2 so that I’m either coming out even or I’m in the green, my thought process is if ppl can’t afford $2 then they shouldn’t be on whatnot buying cards to begin with
Money in versus money out, to gauge an idea of if I’m in the profit I’ll end up figuring out the amount of money I have from card show to card show. If I end up having 1,000 at a show that I go to say I spend it all, end up selling all of that inventory if after all is said and done and I’ve bought every expense i needed to operate, if I’m able to have more than 1,000 at the next show that I go to, then I know I’m on the right track. It’s really difficult with the super super low end to figure out exactly what your profit is for each and every card, just because of the sheer volume that we sell at. It would be time ineffective to worry about profit and loss on a card by card or deal by deal basis. Typically I wait a couple of months before ending up going to another HUGE card show and I’ll end up just doing a massive whatnot stream to sell off the remaining inventory or as close to it as I possibly can, this gives me a nice boost of cash flow and also allows me to get an idea of how I did the last bit of time
It’s really quite simple on the profit loss thing, if I spend x amount of money, and I make y amount of money. If y > x then I am happy :) if x > y then I am no happy
@@benjaminhowell4406 appreciate your support! Definitely gotta try to get more and more card show content for you guys! Plan is to record every single second I can at my next one :) hopefully hoping that my go pro’s don’t mess up this next time! 😅😅😅 was a bummer that happened not too sure what it was about
@@CA09 card ladder :) it came with the $199 psa subscription service I bought, figured it was only $50 more and card ladder has come in clutch so much since getting it, honestly probably worth it alone, and you get some extra goodies like credit to sites like loupe and fanatics live.
😂😂😂 I appreciate your support and honestly if being a wide receiver was about 40 yard dash time, I would completely agree! If it’s just pure skill and talent I think we got a decent chance for the home team.
@@jetercollector2134 🤷🏻♂️🤷🏻♂️🤷🏻♂️ before Jefferson there was a guy named Davante Adams, after Justin Jefferson there’s still a guy named Davante Adams. Give me Davante with his experience and maturity 9.5 times out of 10. You got Justin Jefferson over Davante in contest catch situations ? Route running is very close, and speed goes Jefferson’s way. If Davante goes to the 9ers and wins a Super Bowl would he not be dubbed the best wr in football? If Jjetta’s can still be a top wr after being in the league for nearly a decade; then yes I would dub him the best wr in the nfl no matter if there was a new guy on the block that actually had a chance to be ranked higher, if you can perform at a high standard for 10 years, I think your job is going to dub you the best at it, regardless of if a new guy with new technological advances and easier access to methods and knowledge that can improve your skillset, performance, and productivity. It’s one of those things, give them both the same exact situation for the same exact periods of time, who would you say would all around have the better career? Probably Davante Adams.
I would love to get back into selling on Whatnot but i have no time to promote myself on Social Media to get the amount of followers I need to hav ea good show. Please do a in depth video on how to run a good show as I sell on ebay but would love to get some cards to fly on whatnot. TY for all you do
Make sure you subscribe so you can enjoy more content I post in the future, honestly before I started posting consistently on RU-vid, I’ve had the same amount of average viewers as I do then, as I do now that I have a RU-vid channel. It’s just something you might think impacts my sales, but most of the time I don’t really think it impacts the amount of people in my rooms. One of my goals is to create a program to help further people’s ambitions of being a successful whatnot seller, im a little hesitant to post all that I know about whatnot because I have had some people in real life that I’ve shared my knowledge with, just pretty much start streaming directly after I start my stream, and also seeing good success just by what I’ve told them in the 5 minutes I talked to them.
I wish you luck on the sub. It seems your on the right track with your process of grade speculation. I always send in very well centered cards that have minor corner/surface flaws and seem to do well. In most cases with me a mint 9 is a huge win though. Most of my collection was purchased pre 2019 boom.
I appreciate your comment, hoping that psa agrees or thinks I was being too harsh in most instances. :) it’ll be good to know what type of stuff to avoid sending in and what type of stuff that would be more lenient forsure
good luck on your submissions. You shouldnt re sleeve cards too much, im sure these cards were in top loaders and now in savers. Now you plan on taking them out to clean them?
I agree with that! I am typically very careful and haven’t ever caused any damage by unsleeving or changing them out, one of the big things my friend said was to make sure I use a microfiber cloth and to wipe them down; I don’t clean them with anything else but a microfiber cloth. I knew I cleaned most of them with one before sleeving and putting them in card savers, but I wasn’t sure if I ended up doing it to all of them, and I had them stashed away in those card savers and team bags for probably 1-2 months depending on the card and all that maybe even longer, so I wanted to make sure to freshen them up before submitting, I found some particles and stuff on the cards themselves forsure on some of them so I’m not sure what it was that had let them get those but I wanted to make sure I did that and make them all fresh and good to go before submitting. If I wasn’t so comfortable with the way I handle cards I would definitely say I shouldn’t change them much, but I’ve been handling and packing 10,000+ cards as of now just over the last year to sell. So it’s just second nature to me at this point.
Fun to see how others pre grade. I do my grading through CGC. Love using their bulk sub for 8.80 per card cause I paid for the Elite membership since 150 of the cost is just credits towards grading. Not as much of a gut punch on the misses.
That’s really awesome to know about cgc grading, sadly even for Pokémon or anything they don’t sell for the same premium or liquidity as psa slabs do 😅 its definitely just something I wanted to make sure I did for fun figured it would add a little more to the video and also help me gauge an idea on how decent I am at telling grades or not
@@ruffasportscards the difference in premium is about the difference in grading cost from what I have experienced on my sales. I mostly grade for my collection though and feel they are more accurate compared to PSA. I have a lot from both, I also prefer the slab from CGC.
@@RainStryke always good to hear about people’s experiences. Yea I’d mainly just be worried about not having the wide appeal that psa slabs do have, since I’m not planning on keeping any of these cards for myself rather planning to just sell them off, if I just can’t sell it to a wider audience could mean that I’m sitting on them for a lot longer
@@ruffasportscards they are gaining traction pretty fast. I know the last show I went collect a con in KC last month was 90% CGC. eBay also uses them for the authentication on more expensive cards. They have not generated the slab numbers but they are already a large part of the business in transactions… it won’t be long till they are contenders… PSA is already paying for super aggressive marketing to make them seem smaller than they are.
Too many flaws! If I feel that a card would be judged harshly by psa for whatever reason that may be; I will not send it in, sometimes its surface flaws like scratches, surface indents, corner dings.
What do you mean? What’s confusing about it? I feel as if the card will grade a certain grade, so hence I send in the card to be graded. Sometimes you might be just overthinking the grading process. That might be where you’re missing out the most.
@ruffasportscards the point of grading is u send cards that u don't see things wrong with if u already see imperfections before u send them almost no reason to grade stuff psa 9 and raw are worth same now on modern cards
@joelkaplan2157 that’s the case for some cards yes, and there are plenty of different cards that a 9 will increase the value of your card, and plus when there are VERY minimal flaws, it can be overlooked or less harshly graded by grading companies. Trust me, there was plenty of value in the submission I’ve sent out here. Just because you are close minded in your grading tactics doesn’t mean there isn’t opportunities out there. Just wait for the grade reveal, you can either tell me you were right, or maybe you’ll not be confused anymore.
@ruffasportscards r u saying your making up fake imperfections in the cards to make it look like good psa reveal of course they miss somethings but if u have some issues that are clear 2 u psa will 4 sure see them sounds like your asking for problems or pretending your cards have flaws to see our reaction on reveal
@@joelkaplan2157 Some sets have pretty much no 10’s. Like the 1997 Topps Chrome football set it’s lucky to pull a 8 cause of various issues with manufacturing defects. Mosaic 2021 football had a ton of surface damage on the back from the manufacture. 2023 optic football is like that too.
@@7ThumbsUp7 that would be quite the challenge 😅😅 probably not for a very very very long time I’m guessing! But if time wasn’t an issue, I’m sure that we all could do it! :)
No plan on ever stopping this series! If we eventually get to our goal.. I’m sure there will be plenty of other content just like it I’ll release n attempt :)
Really like this kind of content.. I like the reality of it not like other videos where they start with $100 and already go into buying slabs and try to flip them 2 minutes later
Glad that you enjoy it :) I try to always make content that I would watch myself, I’m a simple person. I don’t always need the extravagant videos, especially now it’s nice to just watch people do their own thing! This will most definitely be a series that I keep going for a LONG time, we’ll try to get to that point of buying slabs and selling them, but we gotta get through the tedious bits first :)
@@smanchgibley3839 😅😅😅😅😅 yep his sticker prices were wild! He pulled me aside and wanted me to go through his value bins, said he would get me a good deal, so I picked out probably like 375 or so cards. Just completely ignored the sticker prices when doing it because of how wild they were and me thinking he was just going to disregard them when he was made aware of the sticker prices being so off… but nope 👎 honestly it was one of my most wild deals from start to finish… somehow he still wanted $250 for that lot I had picked out there… just helps me realize if they deal in the super high end stuff, I won’t end up looking or grabbing anything from their value bins that are priced incredibly ridiculously high… now if they have value bins that are priced super good, yea I’ll make a pile up.. but never gonna look through someone’s value bins that have lost the concept of reality
@@smanchgibley3839 yea this one in particular definitely seems to not be on the friendlier side of things also.. but yea sometimes people you just absolutely cannot work deals with.. this person is probably one of those ones for me, although I think he’s got some cool stuff, but definitely so wild in his concept of everything
Sweet its a profit. How much time do you put into everything? $3,500 it's much. So I assume this is a hobby with some profit. Or is it paying the bills or just buying more cards to sell?
I’m doing this full time as of now, my guess is I put in about 35-40 hours a week. I’m just growing something so that when I do decide to start working and doing this also then I can already have a leg up and grow it even more and have it be a nice addition to the income sources I have. Doing something is better than nothing, and planning do something bigger is better than doing something.
Make sure you subscribe so you can enjoy more content I upload in the future, I’ll probably try to make a video about how much time I spent and all that, but I’ll be going over my total profit at the end of the year again also
Most definitely! In this day and age you almost need to have 3 sources of income to actually have a leg up on your financial situation, i have some amazing content planned for the future! Should be super fun to watch I know I would enjoy the stuff I have planned forsure :)
I’ve just started collecting again with a $100 budget and been going through bargain boxes. Nowhere near as efficient as you when it comes to spotting cards that will do well on eBay but hope to get there soon. Watching these batch bargains has got me excited to get my capital up as soon as possible because it seems like buying in higher quantity really does get you better deals. Great videos man keep it up.
Super glad you enjoy them! Yes these type of recaps and bargain bin videos are exactly what I’ve studied in order to be able to tell what cards I should grab or not. I have a video all about how to learn what players might be good to buy posted also you might enjoy
You still have to pay taxes if you have an llc! Definitely check with a licensed accountant on what you need to pay taxes for. You have to at a minimum pay like $800 or some odd amount each year if you have an llc, which $800 is a lot of money if working on a budget forsure.
@@michaeldenzer6024 I actually pretty much stopped posting on eBay from like December 2023, up until like 2 weeks or so ago. But now there is a fire near me so I’ve been not posting anything new the last 2 days and instead just canceling listings and selling them as “sell similar” which pretty much acts as a new listing, but it’s one thing I’ve been starting again very recently :)