Lessons From My First Card Show

Yesterday, I attended a trading card show for the first time. I learned a lot.

First, there are now a lot of card shows, even in Germany. Until a year ago or so, we basically had none. Now, there seem to be five in different cities every weekend. Granted, they vary in size a lot, but still.

Second, Pokémon is the #1 trading card game, but it’s not the only one. At this big event in Munich, there were maybe 70% Pokémon cards, 15% one piece cards, 10% sports cards, and 5% other TCGs.

As a visitor, the least profitable thing you can do at a card show is buy and sell cards. Sure, some people try to negotiate like crazy, but most vendors have bumped the market prices by 10% or a lot more before you can even get them to come back down. And when you trade in your cards, they offer you 85, 80, sometimes as little as 75% of that same market value. It’s weird and makes no sense—except to enable the vendors’ profit. When you sell online, you’ll get better prices. And when you buy online, you’ll also get better prices.

That said, a card show works best when you show up with a plan. “I want to get all the full art promos from the X & Y era.” “I want to get all the modern gold cards.” “I want to start buying commons for a Neo Destiny vintage master set.” Focus on a tiny subset, then pick off every well-priced card you can find that fits your goal. If you don’t walk in with a theme in mind, the show will eat you alive. I saw hundreds of different cards I’d like to own at some point, but with no prioritization, even if I could have bought them all I’d just have ended up with a very random assortment that wouldn’t have moved my overall collection forward in a meaningful way.

Speaking of a plan, you also need a budget and, ideally, bring it with you in cash. Cash sometimes gets you a discount. I heard vendors give up to 5%. It’s fast and efficient. It also makes it easy to keep track of your spending. It forces you to acquire cards as cheaply as possible. And it prevents you from going on a spree without any direction, which is usually when we make our worst buys.

The biggest winner at a card show is a vendor with time and nothing to lose. You show up, price your wares as you see fit, give small discounts if you feel like it, take home everything that doesn’t sell, and wait until it’s inevitably worth more in the future anyway. Most professional vendors can’t do that. They need to move inventory to make rent and their salary. But a private collector who’s doing it for fun can always wait for the next card show.

One thing a card show does have going for it is liquidity. You can show up with a suitcase full of graded cards and make deals worth tens of thousands. That’s much harder to pull off from your couch.

At the same time, most collectors are too impatient. They want the card now, so they overpay for the privilege of taking it home immediately.

Sometimes, however, overpaying is worth it. Not for the immediacy but the memory. I bought a card from a friend who was vending, mostly to support him. I’ll always remember that card. That, too, has value.

Buying in person also eliminates shipping risks, and those are bigger than you think. In Germany, DHL is very reliable. They’re also sneaky. They won’t insure Pokémon cards beyond a certain limit domestically. And if a parcel does get lost, like any insurance, they’ll still try to get out of having to pay. For big deals, meeting up can be worth it.

Another benefit: Card shows allow you to see what you’re buying. You can assess how fit cards are for grading or your binder before you take them home. This is a nice benefit but not an infinite money glitch. The vendors have usually assessed their cards beforehand, so anything that would grade a 10 has likely been removed.

Still, even a simple vendor can be a good vendor. One table was a dad and his son, sitting there with two binders, some bulk to flick through, and maybe a small display case, if that. They got visitors, just like everyone else. Your table doesn’t need to look like the Caesar’s Palace the first time you show up.

A good inventory is a well-sorted inventory. Most vendors tried to have some sorting logic to their binders. Cards for a buck, illustration rares, vintage, drawings from this artist or that one. But the best binder I saw was sorted by set with small paper inserts. “Here, Phantasmal Flames begins.” You immediately knew which cards to expect on which page.

Fireworks draw people in, staples make people buy. Many vendors had items which were technically for sale but truly only served as display pieces. A $1,000 collection box here, an elite trainer box from a rare set there. Some had high-end, not-for-sale slabs. Others did want to sell their expensive cards, but they still acted as show pieces while they were available. But once you’ve got folks at your table, you still need to sell them something—and most people don’t want $1,000 collection boxes. They want the staples. What’s popular right now. A handful of more niche, interesting new cards to consider. And then more of what everyone else also wants. A well-set-up vendor offers both: an experience and an inventory worth browsing.

The best part of a card show is the people. You’ll see like-minded folks, 99% of them are friendly and helpful, and there’s so much creative ingenuity to witness. The show I was at had a stall doing custom engravings for binders, a stall raffling off prizes with a mini wheel of fortune, even a stall where they sold tries at cracking a code to win a grand prize. Plus, everyone’s setups were so unique.

Card shows are for everyone. The most impressive part was not just thousands of people showing up, it was the kinds of people showing up—because they were all of them. Some local influencers were there. Cosplayers were there. Nerds in their 30s like me were there. But so were families with kids, tweens chasing their hobby, young couples collecting together, and dudes in their 50s trying to complete expensive collections. It truly showed how much card games have grown as a hobby, and why the industries building around them are getting bigger and bigger.

Next month, I’ll take the other point of view: I’m vending with a friend. I’m sure that’ll come with a whole different set of lessons. See you when I get there!