[Morris7]

To all the sports cards collectors in this forum...

What's happen with us the foreing sports cards collectors?

Well, here is a little story about a foreing sports cards collector
from Mexico... Me !!!

I was in the states for 20 so years, then I move back to Mexico due
to my mothers health problems, this was about 10 yaers ago.

Right before I went back to Mexico I was deep into the sports cards world,
I had a huge collection of my own of basketball cards, I had a huge storage
to preserve the huge lots that I was buying with my sports cards partner
( I used to find the deals on our state Washington, Seattle to be more exact,
but many times we went out to other states to buy huge lots of sports cards,
- the last deal that I made before I went back to mexico, was for 3 millions of cards- we had an office and a part time clerk to help us to type down the orders, shipping, etc. we also hire two kids to help us sort out and arrenge cards, myself
I was on charge on the back of the house of the whole operation, in other words the work horse, my frien and business partner, he was a lawyer and had little time than me to put into the business but since he was the 60% investor it was okay like that, plus he spend hours at night time doing and dealing with the ebay store that we had, so everything was fine, to be honest it was so much fun for me, 'cause I got to cherry pick all the big lots for my basketball personal collection and my partner for his baseball collection... We used to have tables at all the sports cards shows in our state and the other neighbooring states... All the sports cards dealers at the sports cards shows they used to look for me to to sell me their basketball cards or send me people looking for basketball cards, like I said my collection was huge, no common cards at all, only inserts sub sets, signatures, autographs, folio numbered, patch/swatch, game used/game worn, relics, refractors, holograms, limited edition, parallel, etc, etc... I almost want to cry remembering my personal collection of Jordan's, Shaq's, etc...So it was a well greased machine, for about two years or so until the day that we want it to expend over our limits and make more money, that's when my partner strike a deal with the nationwide store of Target, we became partners with them, they used to have a machine that can do the new wrapping for cards sets of 12 cards, a 12 pack by their own to retail at their own stores, so we just have to supply their demand of sports cards, wich it was a little bit of hassle, because the deal was to provide to them with 3 million sports cards per month, so that is why I have to hassle buying small, medium, large and huge states of sports cards form all over the place... The deal was to select the best cards, put them on a 5000 count boxes, already sorted by sport, somethimes by players and by inserts too. Every time we were ready we used to call them up and they used to send us an 18 wheeler within few days to pick up the pallets full of boxes with sports cards...
So in order for us to keep providing such a huge demand of sports cards, I started buying lots od sports cards like crazy and we rent another big storage space next to the one we already had to protect and sorting out the sports cards, lots of work, but lots of fun and good money... So everthing was nice and peachy, but around the 5th month of just started the deal with them, they send to us a corporate letter, letting us know that they were had to slow down with our deal due to the fact that by that time the country went under some sort of recession, -you all remember that, companies like tropicana, learjet, martin marietta, etc, they were laying off thousands of workers-, since our "product" was not a basic item like food, clothing, etc, we were more like a fancy item and for that not a priority for them to keep on top of their list, so they suggested for us to hold off for a couple of months to see if the country econonomy pick it up then and so will continue our deal...So we immediately resented tha harsh halt in our business, so we went and lay off the part time clerk, the 2 helpers, transfer all the boxes from the second storage to the first one, all the way up to the roof, we cluster our office like a war zone, we did what we had to do then, so the sells on ebay dropped, the sells at the sports cards shows went down, the deals on the side were canceled, a blurry picture for us, so we finally closed down; Target the company never call us back, we have to sell everything dirt cheap and even do we end up filling up our personal apartments with sports cards that we had leftover on top of our personal huge sports cards collections...At that time my mother call me and told me about her health issues and since there were nobody to help her out on a daily bases in Mexico I had to come back, so I told my partner about it, I left my huge collection of basketball cards at his apartment and we agreed on a sort of deal, that when I were to need money in Mexico he either buy from me some small lots of my collection or sell it to someone else and wire me the money from the sale... Well, he did it once, then after that all stopped and till this day I have no clue about his where abouts... So I guess I got the short end of the stick like they say.
So, here we come to the present time of my story, since I got so hooked and addicted to the hobby of the sports cards -specially basketball- I had a few months back the urgent craving of getting once again into collecting cards, so since then I started to try to get some sports cards to jump start my collection but guess what?
I havent been able to get any cards here in Mexico, the few that I come across are lame cards, damged cards, way,way,way over priced, for example if that card goes all around the states for 5 cents, over here you have to pay a dollar for the same card and in dubbious conditions... so I did what it was the next best thing, went to check ebay but the guys that sell sports cards in bulk or small lots, all of them are makinf a killing with the shipping cost, plus most of them have a terrible reputation when it comes to sending sports cards to Mexico, most of them they keep the money and never send anything or they send you something else or some other scams... So I decide not to go that route, so the other and last option for me was to try and use the craigslist and try to buy some sports cards lots from particulars, people into this business or just plain and simple regular collectors...Well, you guessed right, I still have gotten nothing yet, every time that I try to stick a deal, they argue that I'm trying to rip them off even do I'm offering to send the money up front first, nor even like that want to deal with me, so after a few months of closed mindedness from all those sports cards sellers on the craigslist, am about to give up my true and only past time that I love so much but that now living here in Mexico is so difficult to acomodate... I don't know what else to do besides hopping for a good collector or seller to give me a positive response to a one of my offers for getting some sports cards... I have send already about 200 e-mail regarding of this subject, offering to buy some lots of sports cards, but til today I got about 75 negative responses so far, I'm guessing that half of the remaining sellers will not even send me an answer back and the other remaining probably will say no... There you have it.

That is why the title of this post... If anyone have a positive comment to make about this subject, please feel free to do so... That may cheer my up.

Thank you to you all, fellow sports cards collectors.

[reagle beagle 37]

tl;dr

[djohn]

When I first read the title and even the first bit of the post I kept trying to figure out what foreing meant, until I finally figured out it was a typo for "foreign".
Sorry to hear about your poor luck in getting cards in Mexico. Try checking into COMC to buy cards, I know they do international shipments, and what's nice is that you can buy one card at a time, and then wait to have them all shipped together at a much more reasonable shipping rate.

[scottzoe]

I second the COMC idea. You can can both buy and sell there. you can have the cards sit in your account for sale and have them shipped to you when you want. I usually have them shipped every few months which makes the shipping charge minor.

Scott

[djohn]

Also with COMC, you can set-up a COMC mailbox and buy from eBay and have it shipped to them. Then the cards sit at COMC until you take delivery. That will allow you to buy off eBay without having to worry about people thinking you're scamming them or paying ridiculous shipping costs.