When I first tried to make money with sports cards, I did all the wrong things:

Fast forward a few years, and things are night-and-day different. In fact, just yesterday, I sold 2 cards for about $1,300 — and about $600 of it was profit.

And learning how to get started & profitably flip cards fast is exactly what I teach in the Casual Flipper Bootcamp.

So, if I were just starting my investing career today with limited cash, what would I do?

With limited money, time, and skill, we need to keep things simple.

I would start with the following:

With PSA’s lowest available tier being $80, we just can’t do any meaningful volume with $500. That would be 1, maybe 2 cards, and then your money is tied up for months.

In the beginning, being active in the market is the best education. You might lose some money (because you’re new), but if you buy the right cards, your downside is limited.

So, I’d recommend for now sticking to buy-and-hold.

I’m not a fan of super-cheap cards, as they’re often not as sought after and there can be a lot of competition on eBay. In fact, I’ve lost more money on cheap cards in my career than on expensive ones.

So, I’d target cards in the $30 - $50 range, meaning that you can pick up 10-15 cards. In this price range, you’re getting into a higher quality of card, but you’re also able to 1) diversify your risk and 2) buy enough volume that you can start to see patterns.

Now, only buy cards that are:

The fastest way to lose your money is to buy cards quickly with little research.

You need to stack 3+ reasons that each card should go up in value in the next 3-6 months.

Reasons like:

And there are plenty more, but this is a good list to get you started (again, assuming you are brand new and starting from scratch).

I only buy & sell on eBay, and that’s even more important in the beginning. It’s easy to learn and it’s the platform with by far the most volume. They make shipping and managing listings incredibly easy.

No need to complicate things with Facebook Marketplace and IG, at least for now.

But even on eBay, it may be hard to find your targets. Just be persistent, check back each day, and you can even set up Saved Searches so you get alerted with new listings that fit.

However, you can also stick to cards with so much volume that you can always find one — especially at this level of pricing.

For example, if you wanted a Joe Burrow PSA 9 Prizm rookie, they’re selling for around $30.

On eBay, I found 4 Buy It Nows at exactly $29.99, and probably 10 more between $30-$40 that accept Best Offers. There are also several auctions that will likely end around that $30 number.

If you stick to cards like that, it’s easy to find ones to buy.

Then for selling, I’d relist immediately on eBay at the price you want to sell.

So, let’s say you spend $38 on that Burrow card (with shipping & tax).

You need to sell that card for $57 to get a 30% return (eBay takes around 13%, so you’d pocket around $50, which gives you an ROI of 32%).

So, go list that card for $60 and accept an offer at $55+. It’s too high to have any takers right now, but you’re ready to capitalize when his pricing spikes.

(I’m not saying Burrow is a great buy right this second… just using his pricing as an example).

Now let’s assume that you break even or lose a little bit of money on this first batch of cards… that’s okay!

You should learn quite a bit about the whole process: reading the market, seeing what drives price, and the actual buying/selling process.

But, you’ll start to see some wins, too. What drove those wins? How can you replicate that success?

Go back out and be picky about finding the right cards.

Once you’re feeling more confident there, I’d start getting into grading. It’s the fastest, most consistent way to raise the value of your cards.

Now, that’s a bit too big of a topic to cover today (it took me 75 minutes in the Casual Flipper Bootcamp for the deep dive)…

But for now, getting active with those lower-level flips is a great, low-risk education.

And remember this — that $500 you spend isn’t really risking $500. Those cards will never go to zero.

Absolute disaster would be if those cards dropped to $250 in value (which I can’t really see happening if you follow the rules). That’s a really cheap education for learning a new business, all things considered

So, go out there, be active in the market, and start learning the lessons that come from doing things firsthand!