Thanks for the great content, this is exactly what I was most excited to see with your starting over story, how you work around having a large inventory in a very small space and how you adapt your process to deal with this challenge. Please keep us updated on how this process evolves as your inventory grows, for example what things change when you have 50k or 100k cards listed. For me it was organizing and integrating cards into the sorted collection that kept me from doing this more (its just a side hustle so if its ever too annoying I just do it less). For example I hated that if I sorted and alphabatized another 1000 cards from a set I was forced to shift everything around in the boxes so that I could add those 1000 cards into my sorted collection. My first pass on solving this problem was to reserve a specific amount of space for each set and then instead of adding things directly to my TCG player inventory I would add them to a sorted box(es) that had its inventory tracked in a google spreadsheet, then I wrote a few scripts for google sheets that would let me import the full inventory export from TCGPlayer and compare that to the inventory of one of my sorted boxes and it would spit out another csv that told me which cards to pull from that sorted box to put into my inventory boxes and this csv could be uploaded straight to tcg player to update my inventory on Tcgplayer. This made my organization process bearable so I continued to expand my inventory, but the process of integrating cards into my inventory boxes still had me dragging my feet. So my next pass and what I am currently doing is that I no longer have the sets of my Tcgplayer inventory all in the same box, instead I wrote a program to track where my inventory is and where I should look when I'm filling orders. So now the process looks like this, I sort and alphabatize a bunch of cards from a single set (1-2k cards at a time), then I use a Tcgplayer export to update my inventory numbers and prices and use that same export to update my inventory in the program I wrote along with which box had space for this stack of cards (boxes are just numbered and I put the entire stack of cards that I sorted into any box that has space for it). Then when it comes time to pull cards for orders I download a pull sheet for all the orders and run it through the program which spits out another pull sheet that tells me every card to pull from each box. As you continue to ramp up your operations I'd love to hear tasks keep you from doing this more (no necessarily the ones that are hard or take a long time but more just the ones that you find the most annoying to deal with) and what kinds of solutions you've come up with to make those steps less annoying. I'm a software engineer by trade so I tend to lean into solving things with software but I'd love to hear about other solutions.
Thanks for your detailed explanation! 😲 I do get a bit annoyed with the integration step, because I feel like it's extra work after the important part is over. But I think I'd go extra feral if the cards weren't ultimately all organized together. Even with documentation of where everything is, it would drive me bananas I think. The other annoying to me step is the conditioning step. I can only do so much before I start getting light sensitivities that push me towards either a migraine or an autistic shutdown. To deal with that, I only do it in chunks and take breaks to do other tasks. Also I don't sweat if I miss something because I include conditioning as a part of each step in the sorting process as kind of a triple check before cards get listed
Just discovered your channel, really enjoying your videos and appreciate you sharing what you've learned. I have been playing MTG since around Revised and Ice Age, stopped for many years and started again in 2020 with Midnight Hunt. I recently bought a collection that has a ton of old bulk all mixed up (was a throw in some boxes of rares and mythics I wanted). I want to get the cards organized, pick out what I want to keep, then pick out cards I can buylist and then get rid of the leftover bulk. When you are doing your initial sort by set and you put all the A sets together and so on, do you have a visual guide that you use for the set symbols? There are lots that I don't know and I was going to make my own but thought I'd ask you first in case you have one you could share (I'd be happy to pay for it)
I have most of them in my head, as MtG was my primary game for a long time. But whenever I don't know a symbol, I use mtgstocks.com, they have the set symbols laid out with the set names
Great info as always! I'm fortunate to have a full basement with racks that I rotate and use 3-5 rows as I buy collections, sort/process and a seperate area for processed/finished.
This is such a useful serie of videos! Can we hope to see something similar for other platforms? Card trader might be interesting due the "card trader zero" option. Especially for bulk sellers.
Similar principles would certainly apply. I'm planning to do a video about CardTrader before long, as I am looking to use that platform for selling non-English cards. I'm glad you've found my video useful!
I use 16 inch deep wire shelves with 800 count single rod boxes without the lid and I have a small standing desk on wheels. I can pull the 800 count boxes and pull what I need and off the top next boxes. And it can be a pain pulling boxes but my shelves are closer together so I can store more boxes
A process that works for you is better than trying to do something that you can't adapt to. There are as many ways to operate as there are operators. Glad you've got something working
I would highly recommend you specifically don't buy that shelf behind you. Look at how the shelves are joined at the mid point, that is not how those types of shelves are supposed to be built, regardless of what the sellers images show. I bought some of those and instantly returned them as the shelving beams are supposed to join the top and the bottom of the two sections (the instructions specify this as well) but the way they designed their sleeves it's impossible. It's an active safety hazard.
I don't know what you mean. I built these according to the instructions, and there is no other way to build them. This is how I've built every one of these kinds of shelves I've ever built, either at home, or in the gigantic hub warehouses of the bookstores and car parts stores I've worked in over the last 20 years. They are entirely symmetrical so you can't put the pieces together backwards or upside down. They feel a lot safer to me than typical wire rack style shelves, that are held up by rubber grommets. I don't see how these shelves, as built, can possibly be any more of a safety hazard than any other shelf.
@@TCGBulkKings Maybe the version you have is different, as it's hard to tell from the video, but those shelves are designed to have a bottom half and a top half, those two halves are held together by a sleeve and by the shelving itself. Normally if you buy the more expensive version where you can't see the openings on the outside you insert an inner sleeve and then as the instructions indicate you take a shelf bracket and place a rivet into the top hole of the bottom half and a rivet into the bottom hole of the top half, this shelf section joins the two pieces and keeps them linked. The shelves you have, or at least the version of them I received, don't have this, they have an external sleeve with holes for rivets but no way to insert the rivets into the required location. That version might hold up for a period of time, but will not be stable long term, now what I can't see in your video is if that sleeve has rivets internally which it may. Though anyone buying that version off of Amazon or similar such sellers will receive one that does not at this time.
Thank you for the info! Right now I'm about $200 a week in sales. I don't move a lot of bulk so it's a lot of collection by and listing singles. I am interested in the direct program. When I make it that far. Would you recommend I start building up a second store so that I can keep the bulk TCG direct program separate from my single store?
Personally, I don't see that adding a second store as a whole lot of value. There's not really a reason to keep them separate. Congrats on your success so far!
I'm not really interested in getting one till I have employees to do all the tasks around it to make it actually add to the overall efficiency of the organization. Until that time I'm hard to convince they aren't a trap
Absolutely love the video, you have been a mentor on my TCG Direct journey. Finally got my hands on 43k bulk cards for cheap. However, with the increase volume comes an increase in varying sets, I have noticed that my Direct Order Invoices are not Set ordered A-Z. It looks to be in release date order or something which is really frustrating when pulling cards for invoices, as my inventory is currently ordered A-Z for Set. Is there a way to change this?
Short answer: no TCGplayer require you to order the cards in the order on the invoice when you send them in, or they might reject your order. So, as I said in the video, I'm going to be shifting to the order TCGplayer needs very soon. Glad I've been able to help, that's really humbling for me to know that I've been able to help others, thank you
From what I can tell, for someone at my stage of business, a card sorting machine is kind of a trap. I won't be able to do the work by myself that would allow for it to be used efficiently, because it doesn't pre-sort them before going in, and it doesn't integrate them into the existing inventory once they come out. In order to justify the cost, I would need it to be running at full tilt whenever possible, which basically requires people around it to keep up with it. On a personal note, I also actually just like sorting them myself, it's one of the few things that soothes me in a chaotic world =]
I barely do anything with my bulk... but I will one day... until then... I just enjoy listening to hear your process. thanks for sharing!
Glad to be entertaining at least 😂
Thanks for the great content, this is exactly what I was most excited to see with your starting over story, how you work around having a large inventory in a very small space and how you adapt your process to deal with this challenge. Please keep us updated on how this process evolves as your inventory grows, for example what things change when you have 50k or 100k cards listed. For me it was organizing and integrating cards into the sorted collection that kept me from doing this more (its just a side hustle so if its ever too annoying I just do it less). For example I hated that if I sorted and alphabatized another 1000 cards from a set I was forced to shift everything around in the boxes so that I could add those 1000 cards into my sorted collection. My first pass on solving this problem was to reserve a specific amount of space for each set and then instead of adding things directly to my TCG player inventory I would add them to a sorted box(es) that had its inventory tracked in a google spreadsheet, then I wrote a few scripts for google sheets that would let me import the full inventory export from TCGPlayer and compare that to the inventory of one of my sorted boxes and it would spit out another csv that told me which cards to pull from that sorted box to put into my inventory boxes and this csv could be uploaded straight to tcg player to update my inventory on Tcgplayer. This made my organization process bearable so I continued to expand my inventory, but the process of integrating cards into my inventory boxes still had me dragging my feet. So my next pass and what I am currently doing is that I no longer have the sets of my Tcgplayer inventory all in the same box, instead I wrote a program to track where my inventory is and where I should look when I'm filling orders. So now the process looks like this, I sort and alphabatize a bunch of cards from a single set (1-2k cards at a time), then I use a Tcgplayer export to update my inventory numbers and prices and use that same export to update my inventory in the program I wrote along with which box had space for this stack of cards (boxes are just numbered and I put the entire stack of cards that I sorted into any box that has space for it). Then when it comes time to pull cards for orders I download a pull sheet for all the orders and run it through the program which spits out another pull sheet that tells me every card to pull from each box.
As you continue to ramp up your operations I'd love to hear tasks keep you from doing this more (no necessarily the ones that are hard or take a long time but more just the ones that you find the most annoying to deal with) and what kinds of solutions you've come up with to make those steps less annoying. I'm a software engineer by trade so I tend to lean into solving things with software but I'd love to hear about other solutions.
Thanks for your detailed explanation! 😲
I do get a bit annoyed with the integration step, because I feel like it's extra work after the important part is over. But I think I'd go extra feral if the cards weren't ultimately all organized together. Even with documentation of where everything is, it would drive me bananas I think.
The other annoying to me step is the conditioning step. I can only do so much before I start getting light sensitivities that push me towards either a migraine or an autistic shutdown. To deal with that, I only do it in chunks and take breaks to do other tasks. Also I don't sweat if I miss something because I include conditioning as a part of each step in the sorting process as kind of a triple check before cards get listed
Just discovered your channel, really enjoying your videos and appreciate you sharing what you've learned.
I have been playing MTG since around Revised and Ice Age, stopped for many years and started again in 2020 with Midnight Hunt. I recently bought a collection that has a ton of old bulk all mixed up (was a throw in some boxes of rares and mythics I wanted). I want to get the cards organized, pick out what I want to keep, then pick out cards I can buylist and then get rid of the leftover bulk.
When you are doing your initial sort by set and you put all the A sets together and so on, do you have a visual guide that you use for the set symbols? There are lots that I don't know and I was going to make my own but thought I'd ask you first in case you have one you could share (I'd be happy to pay for it)
I have most of them in my head, as MtG was my primary game for a long time. But whenever I don't know a symbol, I use mtgstocks.com, they have the set symbols laid out with the set names
@@TCGBulkKings thanks!
Great info as always! I'm fortunate to have a full basement with racks that I rotate and use 3-5 rows as I buy collections, sort/process and a seperate area for processed/finished.
Nice, having more space is a luxury
This is such a useful serie of videos!
Can we hope to see something similar for other platforms? Card trader might be interesting due the "card trader zero" option. Especially for bulk sellers.
Similar principles would certainly apply. I'm planning to do a video about CardTrader before long, as I am looking to use that platform for selling non-English cards. I'm glad you've found my video useful!
I use 16 inch deep wire shelves with 800 count single rod boxes without the lid and I have a small standing desk on wheels. I can pull the 800 count boxes and pull what I need and off the top next boxes. And it can be a pain pulling boxes but my shelves are closer together so I can store more boxes
A process that works for you is better than trying to do something that you can't adapt to. There are as many ways to operate as there are operators. Glad you've got something working
I would highly recommend you specifically don't buy that shelf behind you. Look at how the shelves are joined at the mid point, that is not how those types of shelves are supposed to be built, regardless of what the sellers images show. I bought some of those and instantly returned them as the shelving beams are supposed to join the top and the bottom of the two sections (the instructions specify this as well) but the way they designed their sleeves it's impossible. It's an active safety hazard.
I don't know what you mean. I built these according to the instructions, and there is no other way to build them. This is how I've built every one of these kinds of shelves I've ever built, either at home, or in the gigantic hub warehouses of the bookstores and car parts stores I've worked in over the last 20 years. They are entirely symmetrical so you can't put the pieces together backwards or upside down. They feel a lot safer to me than typical wire rack style shelves, that are held up by rubber grommets. I don't see how these shelves, as built, can possibly be any more of a safety hazard than any other shelf.
@@TCGBulkKings Maybe the version you have is different, as it's hard to tell from the video, but those shelves are designed to have a bottom half and a top half, those two halves are held together by a sleeve and by the shelving itself. Normally if you buy the more expensive version where you can't see the openings on the outside you insert an inner sleeve and then as the instructions indicate you take a shelf bracket and place a rivet into the top hole of the bottom half and a rivet into the bottom hole of the top half, this shelf section joins the two pieces and keeps them linked. The shelves you have, or at least the version of them I received, don't have this, they have an external sleeve with holes for rivets but no way to insert the rivets into the required location. That version might hold up for a period of time, but will not be stable long term, now what I can't see in your video is if that sleeve has rivets internally which it may. Though anyone buying that version off of Amazon or similar such sellers will receive one that does not at this time.
What tray are you using to sort bulk
This was one from mtech cave, if you look back through my videos there's one of me assembling the thing
Thank you for the info! Right now I'm about $200 a week in sales. I don't move a lot of bulk so it's a lot of collection by and listing singles. I am interested in the direct program. When I make it that far. Would you recommend I start building up a second store so that I can keep the bulk TCG direct program separate from my single store?
Personally, I don't see that adding a second store as a whole lot of value. There's not really a reason to keep them separate. Congrats on your success so far!
I can't wait to see what you do with a card sorting machine someday.
I'm not really interested in getting one till I have employees to do all the tasks around it to make it actually add to the overall efficiency of the organization. Until that time I'm hard to convince they aren't a trap
Absolutely love the video, you have been a mentor on my TCG Direct journey. Finally got my hands on 43k bulk cards for cheap. However, with the increase volume comes an increase in varying sets, I have noticed that my Direct Order Invoices are not Set ordered A-Z. It looks to be in release date order or something which is really frustrating when pulling cards for invoices, as my inventory is currently ordered A-Z for Set. Is there a way to change this?
Short answer: no
TCGplayer require you to order the cards in the order on the invoice when you send them in, or they might reject your order. So, as I said in the video, I'm going to be shifting to the order TCGplayer needs very soon.
Glad I've been able to help, that's really humbling for me to know that I've been able to help others, thank you
Have you thought about a card sorter?
I know super expensive but got to save time and your back
From what I can tell, for someone at my stage of business, a card sorting machine is kind of a trap. I won't be able to do the work by myself that would allow for it to be used efficiently, because it doesn't pre-sort them before going in, and it doesn't integrate them into the existing inventory once they come out. In order to justify the cost, I would need it to be running at full tilt whenever possible, which basically requires people around it to keep up with it. On a personal note, I also actually just like sorting them myself, it's one of the few things that soothes me in a chaotic world =]
Cheers bro
How many cards do you have listed on TCGplayer?
Currently, approaching 10k, but I've had up to 150k in the past, before I started downsizing in preparation for moving to Tucson