Introduction & Life after eBay

First off, I'd like to welcome you all to my blog! Since this is my first post I should start off with a little introduction to who I am and what exactly I will be blogging about in the future. My name is Tom and I'm a collector of Baseball, Basketball, and Football Sports Cards. I'm currently enrolled as a college student and enjoy buying, trading, and selling Sports Cards as a hobby. After spending some time browsing through and reading other sports collectors blogs I've decided to begin one of my own (hopefully I can draw some readers). Within my future blog posts you can find material that will be related closely to sports (mainly baseball, basketball, and football) along with my experiences and thoughts about the sports card hobby!

Now, the topic of my first post, I'm curious to know where you other sports cards collectors have been selling your cards besides eBay (feel free to leave comments sharing your insights to any eBay alternatives). Recently, in the last week or so I've totally shut down and abandoned me store on eBay where I had a total of 2,200 active listings just after becoming a powerseller! The reasoning behind this action is due to the lack of profit from selling cards in the $1-$5 range with all the listing and final percentage fees. I know selling sports cards on eBay is only reasonable when you possess that rare autograph of a rookie standout or hall of fame autograph cards since you will be able to receive top dollar for such cards with the help of eBay's traffic. Personally, I only have a few such cards in my collection and more interested in selling/trading my base, inserts, serial #'ed, and average jersey/autograph cards. My personal feeling behind having a place to sell these types of cards is to make them available for people who collect these players at a reasonable price. In order to do so, I need to find a place where I can sell cards without having to pay listing and final value fees because as small as they may seem at first, they do add up! ($0.03 x 2,200 items = $66 just to list each month with the $16 eBay store fee!) TOO MUCH!

After some research surfing the web for a new place to begin selling sports cards I've finally decided to pay a site to host a web store where I can list items and sell them only having a pay a $10/month fee. This site provides me with the freedom to create my own web store without having to pay final value or listing fees, just the simple monthly payment. With the freedom to list freely and update and add features to my store front, I'm excited to make the cards I have in my collection available to collectors at very reasonable prices! My main goal is to list all my base, insert, serial #'ed, and autograph/jersey cards of players that I'm not personally collecting and make them available to you at what I feel to be fair prices. The majority of the cards I'm currently listing are available under $1 which is currently the lowest price any item can be with the fixed price listing option on eBay. The only major difference is the amount of traffic for my site compared to my previous eBay store. Traffic will become my sole responsibility and most likely my biggest challenge in the upcoming months while I try to get up and running. If your interested, head on over and check out my site Cardboard Singles at www.cardboardsingles.com. I'm currently working on adding more listings throughout the summer!!! I will do my best, but remember this does take time.

Please feel free to let me know what you think about my site by leaving a comment here or send me an e-mail at cardboardsingles@hotmail.com! Also, if you'd like to share your eBay alternatives or eBay selling experiences with me, please do so. I'm interested to hear about your success or perhaps even failures in your attempt to buy/sell/trade sports cards online.

Hope you decide to check out my site www.cardboardsingles.com! I'd enjoy to hear what you think!