5 Pokémon Business Mistakes Beginners Make

Ajouté : 2026-06-01

[00:00:00]A lot of people think running a Pokemon business is easy, that in a bull market, everybody makes money and that all you have to do is buy cards and watch prices go up. But honestly, that couldn't be further from the truth. Mistakes happen all the time, whether you're starting your business for the first time or whether you're an experienced seller.

[00:00:17]Bad buys, fake cards, poor organization, missed opportunities. I've made all of them. And in this video, I'm going to break down five beginner mistakes that I made when I started my Pokémon business, so hopefully you can avoid making the same ones. If this is your first time, my name is Ivan and I started Slab Hobby in January of 2025. I buy, sell, and trade Pokemon cards on eBay, TCG Player, and at local conventions. I've grown this business to a quart million dollars a year, and I'm a long-term believer in this hobby. If Pokemon investing and business content is right up your alley, then you're in the right place. Let's get into it. First mistake is not conditioning your cards correctly. So, when you're starting your Pokemon business, it can be very easy to be a little bit lax or lz fair. And this can go both ways. You can be also very strict. You can you can have that beginner's mentality that I'm going to be perfect. I'm I'm never going to condition a card incorrectly. I'm going to be overly strict with how I condition my cards. Or again, you can be on the other side and not and not take conditioning seriously enough. So, I was in the not taking condition seriously enough camp. And how this manifests on the on the buyer end is pretty obvious, right? A buyer is not getting a card that they think they're they're they're getting. So, if they're on TCG player, you're buying a near mint card. you're buying a nearmint copy of a card, right?

[00:01:30]You're not buying an exact card uh 99% of the time unless you list the photos.

[00:01:34]So, the buyer expects a near mint copy of their card. And so, initially, I was pretty good, right? And a large majority of customers are really, really easy to work with. Um, and it's not super hard to condition your cards accurately, right? Near mint. Um, you follow the guidelines and you should be good. Um, but I remember those those early cards that was a little bit if it was kind of a kind of border, right? like kind of LP, maybe LP plus, near mint minus. I would always go toward the near mint minus cuz again, it's still near mint, right? It's not necessarily a bad thing.

[00:02:04]I'm I'm I'm making sales. A customer is getting their near mint copy of a card.

[00:02:08]And like I said, 99% of the time, people are fine. People are happy. But again, but for those that aren't happy, it can produce real issues, right? Um you lose trust from your customer. You lose you risk reputation loss for your business.

[00:02:24]And just like most things in life, you're going to be more frustrated and vocal about negative experiences than you were about positive ones, right? So, these are all things that you want to really keep in mind when you're conditioning cards. So, my advice, learn TCG Player standards. Uh, same thing for eBay. Understand how to appropriately condition your cards from the get-go and be upfront and transparent about a card's condition. On eBay, most of the time you're listing a photo of the cards, right, through a scanner or or your phone. So most conditioning things are they're out in the open. Makes it a little bit more easy for you. But at the end of the day, be consistent, be honest, be transparent, be upfront to your customer, and know that that lays a really good foundation for having a great reputation in this business. A trustworthy seller that's upfront about this will always outperform a sloppy bad seller. Second mistake, thinking too small. So when I started the business, I it was again part-time. This was uh an hour or so at night, maybe a couple hours on the weekend. I didn't really take it that seriously. I was buying some bulk collections and then bulk exs v's vmaxes and I treated it really like again like a like a side hobby, like a side hustle instead of a legitimate business. And so what did I do? I used the profits from from the business early on and I laid this out in another video of mine. But I I took those profits and I really just reinvested it into my own collection, right? And what did that do?

[00:03:45]That prevented me from scaling as fast as I could, right? So, I'm essentially taking profits out of the business instead of putting those profits and reinvesting them back into the business and growing the business. I'm really just growing my my personal collection.

[00:03:58]And some of you might say, "Hey, Ivan, that's the point, right?" Like, "Hey, you're you're you're making money selling cards and you're growing your personal collection. I don't see a problem." And those people have a point.

[00:04:08]But if you're trying to build a scalable business that's successful long-term, then you you need to reinvest those profits back into the business so that those $200 collections become $400 collections become $1,000 collections become 2,000, 3,000, 5,000. And that over time is how businesses become successful. Their scale grows even bigger. And if we're talking about a 20% profit margin at 100K, that's $20,000 for the year. But if you're bringing in a million dollars a year at a 20% profit margin, now we're talking big bucks, right? That's $200,000 a year. Same principles, same cards, just more of them and at a larger scale, and that's how you're going to win. So, my advice is know what your goals are uh early on.

[00:04:50]If it is growing your collection and you want to reinvest profits into your personal collection, that's fine. Just know that, right? Know that there's going to be some limitations that come with that. um or if you're trying to build a scalable long-term business and know that those profits will likely do you a lot better if they stay within the business and help grow it.

[00:05:11]Shout out Coke Zero the GOAT.

[00:05:14]Number three mistake, bad organization.

[00:05:16]So, how this manifested for me early in my business was um it was actually quite quite early on. So, I was able to get into uh TCG Player Direct. So, I grew the I grew the business pretty fast and I qualified for direct um pretty again pretty fast. And my system for organizing organizing cards was I have an alpha sort right behind the camera here. There's there's God I have multiple wire racks full of cards. Um but I had all these cards in a in a not in a set sort, but in an alpha sort within a certain type of card. So, I had all trainers together and then sorted alphabetically. And the same thing for the Pokémon. So, I would have an alpha sort of all Pokémon for reverse hollows or holof foils. And then if a customer ordered uh multiple cards from different sets, uh that didn't really matter. I I could just pull the cards alphabetically and then I could go on. However, TCG Direct does not recommend sorting this way. They recommend a set sort and then an alpha sort. And then for Japanese, obviously, I I can't read Japanese, so I have to go by a number sort. that actually that system seems to work really well even to this day. But with all that being said, when I got my first TC TCG direct uh standard reimbursement, I got I don't know 5 6 700 cards and they were they were set sort and I remember how long it took me to get those cards out of inventory and get them into the specific order that TCG needs them to be. And it was just a major pain and it was a major pain and I came away from that experience thinking, okay, I've got this is a bad system. If if I'm going to be a TCG Direct seller, then I need to align my inventory and my organization with how TCG Direct recommends you do it for obvious reasons. And I remember a conversation with TJ Poke Pastor pretty vividly. And he and he recommended this and he said, "You should probably organize it by by set sort than than alpha." And I remember thinking, "Yeah, okay. Yeah, sure. Great advice. Um, let's see how it goes. I think I can handle it." Well, again, I did handle it, but was it efficient? No. Was it the best use of my time? No way. Okay. So, I came away from that experience learning, hey, align your inventory, your systems, your organization with how your workflows are, right? How your workflows needed to need to be. So, bad inventory systems can result in in in a waste of time, a loss of time, the opportunity cost of your time, instead of instead of finding those cards for inventory, you could be listing more cards. And then, God forbid, you you you lose a card because you have a you have a bad system. And then that might delay your shipping to your customer. And it just cascades into all this all these negative effects. And it really all could be prevented by just having good systems, good organization from the get- go. And remember, once you build the systems, then scaling it becomes much more easier. And again, you might be thinking, "Hey, that sounds boring. Systems, organization, really, I just want to sell cards." And that might be true. It might be boring. And yes, it might not sound as sexy as selling cards, but it is the foundation of selling cards and selling more cards and scaling, but it is a competitive advantage to have your business set up in an efficient and organized way.

[00:08:14]Mistake number four, waiting for perfect deals. So, I remember being a little leerary of like buying collections and I I remember thinking, gosh, um I want to buy that collection, but man, $200, 300 bucks, that's that's a lot of money. and thinking maybe I could get just a slightly better deal if I wait if I go to another if I wait for another deal to come across the table. And really how it manifested is is opportunity cost. So I could have been moving cards. I could have been selling more cards had I just acted on the deals that were in front of me and me trying to ek out a couple percentage points in margin or maybe overindexing to a a risk that really wasn't there, especially in a bull market like today. And it just becomes way too much time overanalyzing your purchases. So momentum and consistency matter a whole lot more than waiting for the perfect deal. If there's a good enough deal and it meets your margins and it meets your expectations, then jump on it, right? Don't overthink it.

[00:09:09]Don't over analyze it. Jump on it.

[00:09:11]Especially in this market where if you're offering 70%, there's a guy waiting to offer maybe 75. If you're offering 75, there's a guy waiting to offer 77 or or even 80%. So if you've got a deal right in front of you, it's a trustworthy and reputable person. So jump on it. Momentum and consistency again matter far more than perfection.

[00:09:31]And in the time it takes you to analyze, you know, one or two or three purchases, maybe you could have bought five, right?

[00:09:37]And then and then bought sold those cards, then bought another collection, sold those cards and continuously make money instead of worrying about the extra margins or or overindexing to a risk from early on. And that's really the hallmark of successful sellers is execution. And from here, you'll you'll get the reps in, right? I'd rather you get the reps in than not. You'll learn a lot more from action than by sitting and observing from the sidelines. So, get the reps in and grow that inventory. And fifth mistake, fake cards. Oh my gosh.

[00:10:07]Oh, this one to this day it still gets me right. So, falling in love with a card. And part of conditioning, and I mentioned that in the first the first mistake, part of conditioning is also recognizing when you have a fake card in front of you. And certain eras and certain sets are a bit more copied than than others, right? And early on, I'm not buying fake ponchos. I didn't have the budget for fake ponchos, but I had the budget for fake XY era cards. And I remember buying a collection and the tricky part was it was just kind of mixed in, right? It'd be it was mostly legitimate cards, like 95% legit cards.

[00:10:42]And you know the deal when you're buying collection, you don't thumb through every single card. Um, if the person seems reputable enough, they they pass your gut test, they pass your vibe check, shout out TJ, then usually that's good enough, right? And then what happens? You get home, you go through the binder in more detail, and then you're like, "Oh my gosh, these cards are fake." So that's what happened to me. And it sucked. But you learn from it, you move on, and hopefully you again, you don't repeat the same mistake twice. However, just a couple weeks ago, I bought a fake card. It was the I think it was a Gengar or a Gastly from the new Chinese set. And it was a beautiful card. I mean, just amazing. And I I realized it was fake when I got home and it went to listed on TCG Player. I took it out of the sleeve and then I it was instantly obvious. I'm like, "Oh my gosh, this card is fake. The back is all wrong." And if you don't know this, but on the Chinese cards, there's a little Pokemon watermark in the bottom left of the card. And this card just missing it completely. And I don't know how I missed that from the get-go. I think I fell in love with the card and I wanted it and all the other cards were legit.

[00:11:51]He he actually had all the bulk from from that gem pack, but again, fake and you live, you learn, and hopefully don't make the same mistake twice. And the takeaway here is just make sure you're buying legitimate cards. It's a costly mistake and it's one that I hope I don't repeat again. It probably will, but if you take a couple of steps, uh, properly inspect the cars, uh, vibe check, uh, know who you're dealing with, right?

[00:12:15]Does this person have a reputation, a good reputation, and I don't know, 99% of the time, you should be good to go.

[00:12:20]Just make sure you're doing your proper due diligence. And so, that's pretty much it. That's that's five mistakes that I made uh, early on in my uh, Pokemon business, and I still make as you can see, as you can tell. And that's an important point. Experienced sellers are not immune from making mistakes in business, right? They happen all the time. And one of the points that I keep going to going back to is you try not to make the same mistake again because from failure there's always a lesson to be learned. I think it was Elon Musk that said failure has a 100% uh signal to noise ratio. You're always going to learn from failure. And so making mistakes and failing early on are not necessarily bad things. From there, you can glean really important lessons that can help make your business better, make your business stronger, and be better positioned to be successful in the long term. And that's my hope for you. I hope that you took away from this uh those lessons. So, hopefully that you don't make those same mistakes that I made and you can continue to grow a successful Pokémon business. As always, uh do the YouTube things. If you made it this far, comment below what are some mistakes that maybe you made in your Pokemon business. Remember to like this video, subscribe, share it if you found it valuable, and all of these things really, really help the channel. So, I'm trying to build something here. Whether you're watching, whether you're liking or commenting or or you are subscribed, um are a part of that. So, I thank you and I'll see you on the next one. Peace.