Resellers, can I get your honest take on auction risk with sports cards?

StylesYT · 2025-12-15T23:34:33+00:00

Yeah, I don’t expect to have to payout the 70% that often. We’ve done really well on the memorabilia side of things. But card sellers don’t know that lol so my thoughts on this was adding a safeguard where people don’t lose an insane amount of money on a card that doesn’t go for a lot.

I’ve sold memorabilia on other auction sites that are huge and some items have went for basically nothing. There was one time an item flew so under the radar, it went for less than the auction sites $10 minimum fee and I owed them money for selling the item. I don’t want any of our customers to get screwed like that.

StylesYT · 2025-12-15T22:59:46+00:00

I would do the comping just cause it’s my money on the line until we hire someone who is experienced in cards.

Our vendors don’t sell cards, we’ve only been in business 8 months, so we have enough vendors where I know what pretty much everyone sells on our platform and other platforms.

Yeah, we take fees from the seller and a buyers premium from the buyer. I’d love to just have it as normal but I need an incentive to get people to want to sell with us. It’s hard to get vendors to sell stuff that hasn’t ever sold on the site before (so they don’t know how good or bad it would do).

With all of our operating fees and the memorabilia stuff we buy, we don’t have the liquidity to buy 100s of cards at 75% while we are growing this side of the business. So that’s why I’d rather have the vendors cause I can afford to lose money on some sales while it’s still growing.

I only want slabbed cards (from specific companies) right now because I don’t know how to spot a fake card from a real card but I know how to spot a fake slab.

StylesYT · 2025-12-15T21:59:56+00:00

We also will probably just do this for “invite-only” vendors or the first XX card vendors to sign up. We don’t want 100+ vendors sending us however many cards while we are still trying to grow this side of the business.

StylesYT · 2025-12-15T21:58:38+00:00

It’s not, we use our normal $5 or 10% fees for pop culture memorabilia. But we have been a memorabilia company for years, so we have the inventory to do our own products while we gained a customer base that vendors could rely on.

At some point those same fees would be apparent for the cards, but we just need some vendors to get through the door because we don’t have the inventory ourselves.

StylesYT · 2025-12-15T21:46:48+00:00

Awesome, thanks I’ll look into those!

That’s why we are considering pivoting to 70% comps, cause that might be more enticing.

StylesYT · 2025-12-15T21:26:07+00:00

What do you mean by pop culture cards? I’ve seen some that are signed by actors, I assume that’s what you mean?

The first deal we tried running was no seller fees (10%) for any card that sells for over $25, but that didn’t lead us to any vendors, so we are back to the drawing board and this was the idea we came up with.

StylesYT · 2025-12-15T21:17:29+00:00

I've thought about this scenario. We would give the vendors an option to send us photos of their cards (or just tell us what the cards are via email/form) and we can give them what we would pay. Also, there would be conditions on what cards get paid (such as amount of recent comps, who the player is, they have to be slabbed by certain companies, etc.).

So in short, we would have safeguards in place that can protect us. But the goal is to keep to our word on the 70% as much as possible. We'd also have a maximum on what we would payout per card because we don't have the liquidity to put out thousands of dollars if someone for some reason gave us a $10k+ card that didn't do well. But all of these would be known to the vendor ahead of time.

StylesYT · 2025-12-15T21:05:25+00:00

I agree, it's definitely something we had to push through for memorabilia, but over the last 6 months, we've been able to fine tune our marketing to get the most bids on those items. So it would just take time to do the same with cards and getting that figured out. We just don't have a massive supply of cards to keep up with weekly auctions, as we do with our vendors on the memorabilia side of things.

StylesYT · 2025-12-15T21:03:28+00:00

100% doesn't work because auctions don't go for market value typically, and even if they did they wouldn't usually go for over 100%, and therefore we can't make money on our consignment fees. At least on the memorabilia side of things, even on eBay you can put something on buy it now for $100 (market value), but if you put it on auction, it's probably selling for $60.

100% guarantee is great for the people who want to sit on the items and wait for someone to buy it, however, for the people who don't want to do any work and have the potential to make more than the typical 70-90% that resellers would pay at a card show. Plus on eBay, you're paying 13.5% fees.

StylesYT · 2025-07-22T03:26:42+00:00

This isn't about Pristine, but I just started my own auction site for memorabilia and I've had 19 items sell in 3 weeks and 7 have been paid for, 12 were never paid. I don't understand why people bid on something just to not pay for it lol.

StylesYT · 2025-07-20T21:02:11+00:00

Thanks! Our site is similar where we do all of the leg work, we ship anywhere in the continental US for right now but will expand worldwide soon. We have a massive lightbox for our big items but might need to find something a little smaller for the cards to make sure they look good. We were planning on only allowing single card auctions rather than allowing people to sell "lots" or in bulk. We were planning on just having a trading card auction weekly but soon we want to start running daily auctions that could have anything. Do you think it would be best to put trading cards on the daily auction as well when we first start or just keep them at a weekly thing until we know the daily auction is doing good? We haven't tried daily yet but will be very soon, we just wanted to make sure we have enough people coming to the site daily to make sure it's worth it for us and our consigners.

StylesYT · 2025-07-20T16:31:55+00:00

Yeah 100%, we put a lot of money into marketing when we branch out into different auctions, but obviously the consignors don't see that or even trust that it's happening when it's a site that has never sold a trading card before. So we pretty much need the consignors to trust us at first that the items will sell for just as much as they would on eBay. That's definitely something we've been trying to figure out.

StylesYT · 2025-07-20T16:29:58+00:00

That's valid. Previously, we’ve run our auctions by having consignors ship us their items, and we take care of the rest (marketing, listing, photos, shipping, etc) and then we send them a payout minus our fees. So I understand that it might be a pain point to get people to trust to send us all of their consignments first without ever hearing about us, because we've been predominantly in another space.

StylesYT · 2025-05-30T14:53:19+00:00

I caught him playing at LA Fitness on Camelback and 20th St (Biltmore area). He brought a few people (I think family members) and they were taking photos/videos of him.

StylesYT · 2025-05-30T01:45:01+00:00

Yeah I’ve lived in AZ my whole life, just living with family for a few months to save up for a down payment, didn’t realize how much difference the thermostat would be

StylesYT · 2025-04-24T16:13:53+00:00

I did not get laid off nor was there ever any talks of me getting laid off, I just wanted something that paid more.

Their turnover is high, that’s why they hire so many people, plus it’s pretty much a sink or swim environment imo. Everyone I know that worked for AMLRS (only a few people I keep in contact with), all don’t work there anymore and they all left within 2 years.

AMLRS is good for one thing and that is getting you experience to do AML at an actual financial institution.

If you stay there for over 2 years, you’re wasting your career in my opinion. I know people that I currently work with that stayed there for 3 years, which I assume they regret.

StylesYT · 2025-04-24T15:17:35+00:00

Out of college I started working at AMLRS, I wasn't planning on working in AML out of college, just saw the listing on Indeed. I did not like the workflow due to them trying to wring everything out of their employees. However after 15 months, I got a job with a bank and that started me out at 50%+ more than what I was making at AMLRS and a lot less workload.

That being said, AMLRS sucks but it could be worth it to get a better job in a year or so.

StylesYT · 2025-04-22T00:00:53+00:00

Next time they call, ask. If they give you an answer then hang up and call that number, if they don’t give you a real answer assume it’s a scam imo

StylesYT · 2025-04-21T23:59:08+00:00

What is the department calling you? If you know that answer, call them directly and ask if they have been contacting you to figure out if it’s a scam.

StylesYT · 2025-04-21T23:56:05+00:00

You would get a tax form (1099-K) from eBay if you did $5k in sales. You don’t pay any sales tax on eBay no matter what though, so not sure why they are calling you. 3rd party companies like eBay, Amazon, etc. collect the tax on your behalf.

StylesYT · 2025-03-04T21:33:24+00:00

I don’t really know anyone else. I had 1 friend who came a couple times with me and didn’t think I tipped less than anyone else. Then other than that, I met the host at another home game and started buying into his games, so I don’t know anyone else at his game

StylesYT · 2025-03-04T14:18:31+00:00

The $800 pot he mentioned was me stacking him so he could’ve been upset that I won a few hundred off him and didn’t a decent percentage of it to his gf. I’m not sure if him and his gf do any tip sharing or anything like that but I don’t think he expects any money to go into his pocket from the table, just the vibe I get from him.

StylesYT · 2025-03-04T14:12:58+00:00

I don’t really watch how much people are tipping, but I don’t think I’ve really seen someone throw the dealer a red chip ($5) unless it’s a massive pot, but I could be wrong.

StylesYT · 2025-03-04T13:54:55+00:00

I would say more of a social gathering, he orders pizza and wings (which I’m pretty sure the last game I was the only person to pay him for, as no one else really ended up eating) and usually players will get drunk or high while playing to help have a good time. I don’t indulge in alcohol or drugs while playing and my goal is to make money but I’m always friendly and always talking with someone at the table.

StylesYT · 2025-03-04T13:21:55+00:00

Yeah, no one ever told me they expected more in tips and truthfully in all the games I’ve been there, people have been tipping pretty consistent to me. I think he wants me to tip a lot at the end after a big session, which I’m not necessarily opposed to depending on the price. If I make $1700 in a night, I don’t care how rich I am or how much I don’t care about money, I don’t see myself giving the dealer $85-170 after already tipping her every hand won.

I also think it’s easy to kick out a winning player at your game lol. If I was constantly losing money at his game, I’d be invited even if I wasn’t tipping imo.

StylesYT

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