Why You Should Start Your TCG Business with Bulk

Added: 2026-05-30

[00:00:00]What is up everybody? Welcome back to the Ice Age Vault, man. Brandon here with my Randy Macho Man Savage t-shirt on. And today we've got a fun one. If you've been thinking about starting a TCG business, I'm going to be giving you five reasons why you should start with bulk. Why bulk is the smartest way to kick off your TCG empire. And guys, I'm not sitting on the sidelines telling you what I think you should do. I'm actively selling bulk myself. It's been the engine behind my TCG business. And really, it's what this whole channel is about. So, by giving this advice, maybe I'm creating more competition for myself and my other bulk resellers out there.

[00:00:37]But I'm here to give you the playbook to starting your TCG business. I'm not here to be a gatekeeper, right? There's plenty of bulk and plenty of profits to go around. And we just have to do it right and we have to do it smart if we're going to make this thing a success. So, real quick, if you're new here, welcome to the channel. Welcome to the Ice Age Vault. Again, my name is Brandon. I've had this LLC for the last year and a half. And uh like I said, bulk has been the engine behind my TCG business. I've sold tens of thousands of bulk cards across TCG Player, more recently eBay, and even on Facebook.

[00:01:09]With that said, I've made plenty of mistakes, and this channel is designed to help new sellers learn from those mistakes while also helping you guys sitting on the fence playing Switzerland, not sure whether to dip your toe into the water or not. This channel is designed to help you guys make that decision. So, it's time to break down the five reasons why bulk is the smartest way to start your TCG empire. Let's get into reason number one. All right, first off, bulk is the easiest inventory to find. Local marketplaces have a seemingly neverending supply of bulk available.

[00:01:40]Examples of this would be like your friends that are into collecting as well and just have mountains of ETBs and like magic bundles sitting in the corner, those boxes just filled with bulk. Some other examples would be like local game stores that have bulk bins. And of course, as Macho Man would say, the granddaddy of them all. Sorry, Roar TCG.

[00:02:01]I know you got the the kind of lead on doing the Macho Man voice, but I had to take a take a stab at it. But the granddaddy of them all, guys, Facebook Marketplace. I have never put out a search for bulk on Facebook Marketplace and come up with zero results. But just because it's easy and it's available to find bulk, that doesn't always mean that it's worth pursuing. Finding quality bulk at a decent price, it can be challenging at times. Now, I'm typically able to find decent collections every week or two for my business, but that takes going back and forth with a handful of sellers, sending a bunch of messages, and finally agreeing on a price, which all three of those things can be pretty tough at times. Now, you don't have to be a complete genius to get into the bulk game.

[00:02:44]Good for me, right? But you do have to be thorough. You've got to ask the right questions to find the right bulk collection for you and for getting started. Now, if you want to hear about how I got semiscammed on a Facebook Marketplace bulk purchase, go ahead and consider subscribing because I'll be sharing that story on my channel here in the very near future. Moving on to point number two, everybody. Bulk has a lower financial barrier to entry. Now, every market is different location-wise, but I was recently able to pick up a collection of 5,000 holof foils and reverse holof foils for about 220 bucks.

[00:03:20]I'm guessing that you guys could probably do that in your area, too. That collection that I got, that wasn't the one that I got scammed on, by the way.

[00:03:27]Most of those were Nearman and LP condition, but by doing so, I'm able to diversify my initial starting investment. And you could diversify, too, by going into bulk. Now, it's just like diversifying with your 401k, right?

[00:03:43]Most 401k retirement accounts, those are based off of like index funds, which for my non-investor bros, an index fund is, think of it like an umbrella, right?

[00:03:53]Boom. Like that. And you've got 500 different stocks under that umbrella that make up that one fund. A quick example, the S&P 500. That is probably the most popular one. Um, but what that is is just a group of 500 of the biggest publicly traded companies in the US. And the reason that retirement accounts are set up that way is because they're a lot more stable than going allin on a single stock like an Amazon or an Apple. Right?

[00:04:21]If Apple went bust tomorrow, if they shut their doors down and their stock went to zero, if you were all in on that, your retirement would go to zero, too. But if you're in that index fund and one of those 500 stocks go to zero, you've got the stabilization of 499 other stocks. So you won't be left holding the heavy bags. And bulk follows the same principles. Instead of taking your entire starting capital, gambling on a single product, you're spreading your money out. You're reducing your risk of ruin. You're giving yourself a chance to build something upfront in a safe way. And then you can take those profits that you make early on and you can reinvest those into bigger collections, more valuable cards, slabs, sealed, whatever you want down the road when you can make those those bigger purchase decisions with a little bit of experience under your belt and a little bit of wisdom as well. Now, even if you've already got a massive personal collection of absolute bangers that you've been collecting since the '9s, beginner mistakes, they're still they're going to happen. Okay? Have patience, my TCG brothers. It will hurt a lot less to make those beginner mistakes on a 25 cent card than on like a $200 card. The key point here, closing the loop on this one, is that buying bulk, it spreads your risk out across hundreds or thousands of cards, and that gives you flexibility to make beginner mistakes without getting completely wiped out financially. Point number three, guys, bulk gives you the chance to do the work upfront and see if you actually enjoy the work and can tolerate it before you fully commit to turning this thing into an LLC, a legit brickandmortar, or even just an online store. It gives you the chance to see if you like the work that it's going to take to make a profitable business. Now, I might be aging myself on this one, but back in my day, we had to learn how to do math the old school way. Pen and paper. Well, we had to use pencils, actually. They wouldn't let us use pens in math class. Actually, let me know in the comments if you guys had that same experience. But we had to do uh addition, subtraction, multiplication, long division, square roots, all of that stuff with pencil and paper before we were able to use calculators. Back then, teachers said that the reason we had to do that was because we wouldn't always have calculators in our pocket. And I think that statement kind of aged like a banana, but the principle of it, right, the idea behind it still applies. We need to learn the fundamentals before we can make a decision on if it makes sense to lean in or back out of starting our TCG business. Your first batch of bulk, that's your no calculator phase, and it provides you a lowcost opportunity again to see if you like the work behind the money.

[00:07:07]Point number four, guys, bulk forces you to build systems so that you're not dragging your feet doing every single task that you have to do to make a successful business out of this. It forces you to build with a mindset of scaling. And I'm a broken record on this. I say it in every other video probably, but a business is only as good as its systems. in bulk gives you enough volume to create good systems. Use some trial and error and not implode when those beginner mistakes that we talked about earlier inevitably happen. Things that you learn early on if you're doing this and you're doing it for long-term scalability are things like sorting efficiently, identifying playable and valuable cards out of big piles of what other people might consider junk. How to condition your cards, how to price your cards, how to list your cards effectively on whatever platform you so choose, how to ship well, safely, get your stuff to your customers, and how to do it on time, how to safely store your collections, time management, like we alluded to. And hey, if you guys want a firsthand look at what my processes look like for intaking a new bulk batch, new bulk inventory, I'll link a video to the end of this one going through my complete process where I'm going from sifting, sorting, listing, pricing, everything under the sun. Okay, I'll link that to the end screen of this video, so don't jump off just yet, but keep an eye out for that at the end.

[00:08:31]Finally, guys, you have to learn how to track your income and expenses like a real business. A lot of people ignore this one until tax season and then they get a rude awakening, right? It's an absolute nightmare. I dodged that bullet early on thanks to YouTube channels like Game Vitamins that kind of talked about tracking finances and I was lucky enough to watch those before I started my TCG business. But I've heard horror stories, guys, of people having to go full Indiana Jones mode, fedora and everything, going back 11 months trying to excavate receipts and recompile bank records for the last year so that they don't get completely reamed out by the IRS when it comes time for tax season.

[00:09:09]Wrapping this point up, figuring out your systems to manage a high quantity of inventory will make your future in this space so much more comfortable. If you can't handle a few thousand bulk cards efficiently, you probably won't survive scaling to higherend inventory.

[00:09:25]Give yourself time to figure your systems out and everything, but if you're going on month three, month six, and it's not clicking, this might not be the business for you. And that's okay.

[00:09:37]Now, our final point, piggybacking off of that last one, it's kind of a counterpoint really, but the last reason that I recommend everybody start with bulk, is because bulk gives you an easy exit strategy. If you end up deciding that TCG selling isn't for you, it's pretty easy to make a single post on Facebook Marketplace or talk to your buddies and at least recoup a pretty solid percentage of your initial investment. Now, that can be said for almost any industry. Like there's a significantly larger pool of buyers at lower price points. And in the world of TCGs, there's a ton of people, myself included, who want to buy your bulk lots for a variety of reasons, like reselling themselves, building decks with those bulk cards, master setting, you name it.

[00:10:24]Right now, naturally, as the price of your inventory increases, your pool of buyers decreases. And there's a lot more people that can afford to buy a $200 bulk lot than a 10,000 card slap. Uh Dave Ramsey, big Dave Ramsey fan. I don't follow everything, but I like his his general message, but he says that over half of adults in the US can't afford a $1,000 emergency based on the average balance of Americans checking accounts. Now, that's a sad state, right? But that is just for emergencies.

[00:10:57]We're not talking about buy now, pay later, clar gang, whatever. Your pool of buyers is significantly larger at lower cost points, which makes it easier for you if you're planning on moving on from your TCG business. It makes it easier to liquidate your bulk collection. The economic reality again is that most people just don't have a ton of disposable cash. Now, those people do exist, right? Somebody just bought a black label Becket 10 uh Bubble MW for like 236,000 bucks. But realistically, guys, like how many people are watching this video, how many people out there could afford that and would would do that? Is that even a smart investing decision? I don't know.

[00:11:40]That's not what we're talking about today. But the fact is lower prices yield faster liquidity in most scenarios. And if you need an exit strategy, you're planning on selling off everything for 80% of what you paid for it. It's a lot easier to stomach that L when your initial investment was only a couple hundred bucks. Bulk is one of the few ways to test this business without getting stuck holding the heavy bags if you decide that it's not for you. So guys, those are my top five reasons of why new TCG sellers should start with bulk. If I had to start over today, I would start with bulk again. No question about it, man. I'm actually simulating that on my channel right now as we speak where I'm cold starting an eBay TCG business for a low investment with about 10,000 bulk cards at this point. And I'm giving you guys weekly updates as to our progress. So, consider subscribing if you want to see, you know, all the ins and outs behind the scenes of what's going on with our TCG business on eBay, our YouTube channel, Amazon affiliate programs, all of that good stuff. Now, if this video helped clarify things for some of you guys, let me know that by hitting the like button. If it gave you something to think about, if you're sitting on the fence and you're like, you know what, I do need to consider that or maybe this is or isn't for me, throw a thumbs up, man. Let me know. But hey, if you guys are ready to make the leap, you decided, you know what, after everything I heard today, Brandon, I do want to give this a try. Check the links in the description for our Amazon affiliate program. Everything that you could possibly need to start your TCG business besides the actual cards themselves can be found through those uh through those Amazon links. Now, if you do want some cards, I can't promise you're going to get bulk prices, but you can check the TCG and eBay links below as well for my inventory. All of that stuff is up for grabs. So, guys, thanks for hanging out with me in the Ice Age vault today. We'll see you again after the weekend with a full recap of our first month on eBay. Peace.