5+1 Q&A With Paul (@SportsCardStrategy)
Paul @SportsCardStrategy PC’s Magic Johnson and Giannis, but what really gets his adrenaline pumping is flipping and advising others in the hobby. I learned a lot from this conversation. I’m not a flipper. It’s not my lane. But I enjoy talking with people who are passionate about what they do—and Paul, who hosts a podcast with the same name as his IG handle while also running a website, has enough passion for any 10 people. We talked about blocking out mainstream hobby investing takes, how what started as a business has led to friendships, and his love of research.
Q1: There's a lot of timidity in the card market right now. If someone started collecting in 2017-18, they'd still be way up, but if they started during the boom around 2020-21, they'd be down. It's hard to gauge. But rather than running away from education and speculation, you're running right into it, unafraid to make strategic suggestions. How did you arrive at that business decision, and what's it been like for you since you started Sports Cards Strategy?
@SportsCardStrategy: Yeah, I get that in the macro, someone who started in 2017-18 would be up, and someone who started around 2021 would be down. The problem with most content creators is that this is what they focus on, the macro. But I maintain there is no singular "sports card market," but rather thousands of micro-markets based on eras, sports, players, brands, sets, parallels, autos, and even grades and grading companies.
Yes, the macro market changes, but the most important change that has happened since 2017 and has only gone up and to the right is sales volume / liquidity. Sports cards are easier to sell by the day and if you can pick the right micro market (also known as "plays"), then you can make money. This is what we focus on at NoOffseason.com and the Sports Card Strategy Show, and this is why I'm always "running right into it," and quite honestly ignoring the noise and click-baity content about the macro market. As long as sales volume goes up, the macro market index of the top 50-100 cards that other content creators focus on doesn't matter as much as the micro markets we focus on at NoOffseason.com.
As far as how things have gone at the Sports Card Strategy Show, it's been amazing. In just two years we've grown a ton and created a community of audience members who are truly like family. We try to be laser focused on providing data-driven insights and helpful information—answering every question and always engaging with our audience. It's super rewarding and starting to pay off.
Q2: Do you also collect? And if so, what's your PC and why?
@SportsCardStrategy: I collect, but I love flipping more than holding cards. That's just authentic to me. I'm a flipper, not a hoarder. I joke on the show that "I don't have a PC." That's not necessarily true, but it's very small. Magic Johnson and Giannis. That's about it for me. I just enjoy making plays more than holding cards, period. Magic is my guy. He's from Lansing, Mich., and led Michigan State to our first ever National Championship in 1979. I grew up a huge Michigan State fan, and am an alum as well. We won our second National Championship when I was a freshman there. That's where I met my wife, and I'm a diehard Spartans hoops fan. It doesn't get better than Magic.
Giannis honestly reminds me a lot of Earvin in his work ethic, leadership and ability.
Q3: Let's hear more about the community you've created at Sports Card Strategy and NoOffseason.com. I imagine that would be one of the more rewarding aspects of what you're building. What's it like for you when you hear back from the community about how their collections and investments are coming?
@SportsCardStrategy: It's the best. I didn't expect to care so much about other people's collections, and root for them so hard to not only get the cards they desire for their PCs, but to help them actually make the money they need to fund their PCs. Our content is pretty much 100 percent about helping people make money flipping sports cards, whether to fund their PCs or fund their lives, and helping them achieve their goals is the best feeling ever. I've also become really good friends with several dozen audience members. I tell everyone that doing the Sports Card Strategy Show is my favorite part of my week. It's like hanging out with hundreds of my closest friends talking about the thing I wish I could be talking about all the time in every social situation!
Q4: I think what struck me the most about what you said before is that there's no singular sports market. What might fit for vintage doesn't for ultramodern, what fits for basketball doesn't fit for soccer, etc. What was the process of discovering that like for you? In other words, what has this process been like for you the last couple of years? What have you learned?
@SportsCardStrategy: Researching this is the most fun part of the entire hobby to me. Part of it is using my pattern recognition from having worked in the NBA in business ops and some basketball ops in the WNBA. The other side is getting creative looking for sleepers to buy low like any good fantasy sports player does. Combining these skills with the data from the different grading companies, and being able to increase the value of a card via grading or cracking a slab and submitting it to a different grading company, you have the ability to incorporate cards from any era and instantly create profits. This is truly compelling and fascinating to me. I could do it all day every day. Ultimately though, in order to successfully go from the research phase to actual execution, you have to identify a marker in the future for when you're going to sell a particular card, and what you will be able to sell it for in a worst-case scenario. Then, you reverse engineer it to the buying point, execute, and profit more often than not.
Q5: First of all, let me applaud you for acknowledging you're a flipper. I think flippers are essential to the market, but it drives me nuts when flippers try to say they're primarily collectors when it's obvious to everyone around them they're just trying to flip. What were the challenges of learning the flipping game? I imagine there's an art to it that comes with patience and practice.
@SportsCardStrategy: I'm 100 percent a flipper. To me, I'd rather just be honest and disarm critics by being authentic. While I wish everyone would love me, the reality is that not everyone will. The best I can do is be honest. As far as challenges, there are tons. I don't mind taking a loss. You have to have high risk tolerance. I'm fine with that. To me, a break even or a loss still means I gained a customer. What I struggle with the most is patience :) If I can actually wait a little longer before liquidating on many of my plays, I could probably make a little more money. I think another thing I'd like to improve at is selling off of eBay. I like eBay a lot because of the ability to auction a card in 10 days or less to a HUGE audience. But the fees are a little insane and they eat into profit margins huge. If I can sell more directly to the end consumer, that will help me pocket more margin.
+1 Question: Who is a player whose market is doing really well right now that you might not have expected six months or a year ago to be doing well? Why do you think this player's market has been successful?
@SportsCardStrategy: Aaron Rodgers. He's horrible. He's washed up. Six months ago I thought he'd finally retire, or go away. Nope. He weaseled his way out of Green Bay into New York just like his predecessor Brett Favre did back in 2008. I fully expect Rodgers's stint in New York to end just like Favre's did - in disappointment.