Selling and trading at card shows
A show is a whole business compressed into eight hours: buying, selling, trading and taking payment, at speed, in front of a queue. The vendors who do well are the ones who decided everything in advance.
Written by Ben and Tom, Cardinal
Before the doors open
- Set a cash float and stick to it. Decide what you're prepared to spend buying at the show before you arrive, and know what's left at any moment.
- Price your stock beforehand. Pricing at the table costs you sales. Every card that goes in the case should already have a number.
- Bring the right mix. Cheap browsable stock brings people to the table; the hits close the day. You need both.
- Decide your buy and trade percentages. Agree them with anyone working the table so two people don't quote two different offers.
- Have more than one way to take payment. Cash, card and a bank transfer or QR option. Every payment method you lack is a sale you lose.
Pricing on the fly
Someone hands you a binder mid-rush. You need a value in under a minute, and the number has to hold up if they check it on their phone in front of you.
The reliable approach is to work from recent sold prices rather than memory, adjust openly for condition, and quote both a cash and a trade number in the same breath. Showing your working turns a haggle into a conversation.
- Quote both numbers. Cash and trade side by side lets the customer choose, and trade usually protects your margin better.
- Keep margin off the screen. If you're turning a device around, use a customer-facing view that hides cost, margin and ROI.
- Round sensibly. Clean numbers close deals faster than exact ones.
- Know your walk-away. A deal you talk yourself into at the table is the one you regret on the drive home.
Tracking the day as it happens
The hardest part of a show isn't selling — it's knowing at 4pm what actually happened. Cash in the tin doesn't tell you whether you made money, because some of it came from selling stock at a loss and some of it went out buying stock at a bargain.
Cardinal has a show mode for exactly this: turn it on, and every sale, purchase, trade and expense is tagged to that show. At the end of the day you close it out and get the real numbers — revenue, cost of goods, expenses, profit and ROI for that event alone.
After the show
- Reconcile the same night. Cash, card takings and stock movements while you still remember the odd deal.
- Get new stock into inventory. Cards bought at the show are worth nothing sitting in a bag in the boot.
- Judge the show honestly. Profit after table fee, fuel and time is the only number that tells you whether to book it again.
Run your next show on real numbers
Try the demo to see how a show gets tracked end to end — sales, buys, expenses and the profit for that day alone.
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