[chads-cards]

yeah man if you have any questions just shoot me a PM.

[sparty78]

I did showsand was part of a LCS before the internet boom took off and had direct accounts with Topps ,Upper Deck , Score Pinnacle. It was a great deal for the shop then. You did need to buy almost everything they put out in order to get the premium stuff. I did shows and at the LCS we could blow out the lesser demanded products. With the advent of internet sales it would be harder to do today. I think I still have the company numbers, but they are 10 years old. I may open a small shop again when I retire from the real job, but the only company I would deal with is Topps. Realistically I think you would need $50,000 set aside plus good inventory to start up. There were times when I had $10,000 plus paid out waiting for products I'd already paid for to ship. That was when wax was alot cheaper too.The best part having a shop is buying the cards that people bring in to you at a reduced price. If you want to still collect much new stuff don't open a retail store , overhead will kill you. If you don't want to collect , go for it , DON'T open your best wax .
Don't think I will count on this to pay the household bills.

[chevy man 22]

Yeah not sure it would be cost effective to open a store and pay rent, utilities, etc.... now days. If I was going to try and do something like that I'd find a good local Flea Market or Swap Meet type thing and just do it on the weekends because that's when the bulk of your store crowd is going to come in anyhow and in the long run it's cheaper to rent a table or booth for 2-3 days than $1000 + a month in rent in a strip mall.

[jayohhessaych]

I would only consider opening a card shop if I won the lottery or had enough $ to not worry about only breaking even.
Also, there was a sports card radio podcast a few weeks ago where he talked to a shop owner about what it took to open his store I thought was pretty interesting. It's probably worth checking out if your considering going for it.

[swjrp10]

My LCS doesn't even buy direct. So I'm assuming you have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in wax to get direct access.

I think there is a website called dealer net, that you can go to once you have a card shop and you can get pretty competitive prices.

Of coarse I could be completely off on this.

My LCS back in my hometown does a mix of direct and dealernet. From the amount of time I've spent there (way too much) talking buisiness (way too frequently lol) it seems that you atleast will have a lot fewer headaches dealing with fellow dealers on dealernet.

That being said, they also don't carry an insane amount of wax. When I buy a box from them they normally are making less than 20 bucks off of a box, their major income is from singles.