I’ve said it before and I will say it again. Buy Naruto cards. This movie may not come out for another year or so but that gives you time to accumulate the cards. Because when the cards come out, I won’t even try to speculate on what the cards are going to do. But take a look at One Piece and the craze that is happening to those cards. They have the live action bringing new people in and the people that have been watching it for 100 years have been waiting all their lives. lol I don’t know if anyone road the one piece wave in January but one piece cards 2x-10x’d that month. They just gave the cards out at the dodger stadium and one piece scalpers did what they do best and insured that the value would sky rocket. Now imagine you watched one piece have all of this success and all of the guys that got in early were working jobs at the time and now the majority of all of those vendors at least the ones I have talked to are retired from those full time jobs selling one piece cards full time because they hit it hard before the wave started to swell. I am not a financial advisor. Nor am I a rocket surgeon. But I’m going to continue throwing money into the Naruto pot and accumulating cards. If I want to make an easy 50k-100k I’m willing to bet that this is what is going to do it. And the Bandai cards coming out will come out at a premium because of this movie. That doesn’t mean you succumb to fomo (fear of missing out) it simply means, buy some of the main characters here and there before Bandai and this movie come out. We don’t know when the wave will hit exactly, one piece took being on the shelves for 2 years before anyone paid attention to it. The cards that are worth 6 figures in one piece were once $50.00 a few years ago. So when Bandai produces starts throwing them on the shelves so t sleep on them. They will likely get pulled by scalpers and resold on eBay. Sure that part can suck but if you make friends with the scalpers they can be awesome to have around. After all they are people as well trying to make it same as us.

So I woke up this morning to these two cards sold. I bought these at the previous show with trade for things that I had maybe $300 into and some cash on top. I profited quite nicely on this deal. So I essentially turned $400 into $900 give or take depending on eBay fees. So I decided to make an offer on two serialized naruto cards at $500 and they accepted that offer. I got asked 3 or 4 times at the show if I had any serialized naruto cards. My answer was always, “if I did I probably wouldn’t sell them.” Just because I love naruto cards and they are the only cards I really collect personally. If these two naruto cards are super clean I’ll send them off to Beckett. I’ve seen quite a few serialized cards get Beckett black labels. If they both get black labels which is unlikely but possible then they could sell for quite a premium I’m guessing. There are no sales so it’s a sellers market and people love Naruto. But there is a piece of me that is unlikely to sell them. Now look, naruto is an asymmetrical play in an unproven market. I don’t Recommend doing plays like this but because naruto is a massive IP I feel comfortable personally. When doing plays like this you should limit yourself to maybe 5%-10% of what you are looking to invest. Buy the stuff that sells easiest such as Pokemon. I have a lot invested in Pokemon so I’m fine taking Pokemon money and running a speculative play. Plus I have more cards to sell that I know will sell. I’ll just continue reinvesting.

I start by going to eBay and typing in psa 10 anime. Then I set the price between $300-$600 as shown in the pictures below. I filter for sold psa 10 cards. Then I search for main character cards like Monkey D. Luffy here from one piece. They are selling on eBay for a nice premium and the gem rate is high. There are 407 of these in a psa 10 ( which anything under 1,000 population is ideal) and they sell for $500+. Next I found one from a seller with an above 95 rating on eBay. They are selling one at $75 plus shipping and eBay fees. Plus they had pictures from every angle that I want to see. All 4 corners on the back is ideal. Then I copy and pasted all of the photos into ChatGPT and asked what is the likelihood that I will get a psa 10 on this card. I already know what psa is saying about getting a gem mint 10. It’s pretty easy to do. Now AI is telling me that the average is around 72.5% of this card in particular hitting a psa 10. Anything above 70% is a real potential hit in my book. It’s checking all the boxes that I look for. Spend less than $100 per card and make sure that they sell for over $500. I do realize by the time I get the card back from psa that this price is likely to fluctuate quite a bit. But as long as I get a 10 my margins will still be there. Next I will drop this off with the other potential candidates at GameStop because I’m a busy man and let them handle the rest. I’ve developed a nice relationship with everyone working there and they always look out for me so that when I come in they have stuff waiting for me under the counter to either sell to me or slabs that I’m getting back from psa. Once I get the card back I’ll check the price again and see what this card sells for on eBay and what GameStop will give me for it. Sometimes I get lucky with GameStop but most of the time they lowball me. Finding this card took me approximately 7 minutes this morning chillin in my PJ’s before a show to sell more cards. Teach your better half how to do it and you potentially make $1,000 every 7 minutes in the morning.

I bought an Umbreon vmax rainbow rare for $50 and graded it for $20. I’m $70 into this card and it grades at a PSA 8… it’s really clean but it’s an 8 and sells between $30-$50 as a PSA 8. The card is selling for $60 raw. So instead of taking a loss I’m cracking it and selling it raw. It’s currently selling on eBay at $65. So I’ll take a $5-$10 loss on it. All that to say I bought for $50, and am selling it for $65 raw. This is going to happen, most of the time I’m not going to care because I send so many cards in that I’m typically in profit and am prepared for losses. You aren’t always going to get a 10 and have to have a way to liquidate your 9’s and below. Sometimes this is the way. This card is likely a tag 10 but I’m not in the habit of cracking and resubmitting because the margins need to make sense. The question you’ll have to ask yourself is, do you want to take a $40 loss or a $5 loss? Seems petty at this level but eventually you’ll be asking the same question but with thousands of dollars. So in higher terms would you take a $4,000 loss or a $500 loss? Both hurt, but one hurts a little less. It’s best to train your brain in this way because once you get bigger the losses get bigger but so do the wins.