The pre-game checklist.
You can work a card show with a floor sheet and a pen — collectors have done it that way forever. This is that sheet: everything to do before the doors open, while you're at the table, and after you pack the car. It's also the manual version of what Card Bullpen is being built to automate. Useful either way.
Free, no email required — the sign-up lives at the bottom if you want it.
Clip it to the cash box.
On paper, this page drops the nav, the footer, and the sign-up — just three lists and their boxes. Print it, clip it to the cash box, and check things off with a pen.
Win the show at the kitchen table.
Every minute you spend here is a stall you don't hit at the table. Do this the night before, with the comps in front of you and nobody waiting on an answer.
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Pull sold comps, not asking prices.
For anything you'd hate to misprice, check what copies actually sold for in the last 90 days. Asks are wishes; solds are the market.
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Set a floor and an ask for every priced card.
The floor is your walk-away number; the ask sits above your estimate with room to come down. A card reading about $94 might carry a floor of $84 and an ask of $103. (Illustrative, not a live quote.)
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Write the numbers down.
Sticker the ask on the sleeve; keep the floors on one master sheet, or in a simple code on the sticker's back. A floor that only lives in your head renegotiates itself under pressure.
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Run the grading math on anything raw and promising.
If a raw card runs about $60 and clean PSA 10s sell near $140, a ~$25 grading fee clears with room to spare — that one may be worth holding back from the table entirely. (Illustrative, not a live quote.)
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Set your bundle rule in advance.
Something like "a little off any stack of three or more — never below the summed floors." A rule made at home beats arithmetic done under somebody's stare.
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Build the dollar box on purpose.
Cheap boxes move volume and start conversations. Cull anything you'd regret selling for a dollar before it goes in, not after it's gone.
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Separate the not-for-sale pile.
Personal-collection cards stay home or get marked NFS. Deciding mid-haggle is how keepers walk away.
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Set a buy budget and write the want list.
You're a buyer at this show too. The only budget that survives a glass case is the one you wrote down before the doors opened.
The pack list
Pack the night before. The table that runs smooth is the one that brought boring stuff.
- Toploaders, penny sleeves, and team bags — more than you think you need
- Painter's tape, a sharpie, and blank price stickers
- A loupe, for your cards and theirs
- Cash box with change — heavy on small bills
- Payment QR codes, printed and taped where buyers can see them
- Phone battery pack and a spare cable
- Stands or a riser for the cards that earn the eye line
- The floor sheet — printed, or in your notes app and charged
- Water, food, and whatever keeps you patient at hour six
Quote the ask. Hold the floor.
Everything you did last night was so this part could be calm. The floors are set, the rules are written — at the table, your only job is to follow them.
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Quote the ask, then stop talking.
Name your number and let the silence do its work. The first person to negotiate against themselves is usually the seller.
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Move one number at a time.
When they counter, come down once, deliberately. Sliding twice on the same card teaches everyone within earshot that your stickers are decoration.
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Below the floor is a no — a friendly one.
That's the whole point of setting it last night: the decision is already made, so you don't have to make it under pressure. "Can't do it, but thanks for the look."
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Stacks get the discount; singles don't.
Bundle prices come from summing the floors, not from the mood of the room. Be generous above that line — never below it.
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Treat a trade as two sales.
Value their card at what you could actually sell it for — sold comps again — not at what they're asking. No read on it? Passing costs nothing.
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Don't price on the spot for anything that matters.
If an unpriced card draws an offer and you can't pull a comp at the table, set it aside. "Not today" is free; guessing wrong is real money.
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Let them walk. Let yourself walk.
A card that didn't sell at your floor is still your card, at your floor. The market gets another swing at it next show.
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Log every sale as it happens.
Card, price, cash or app — one line, ten seconds, sticky pad or notes app. Tonight's bookkeeping depends on it.
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Mind the cash.
Big bills go somewhere that isn't the open box, and count change back out loud. Boring is the point.
Log it while the table's still warm.
The next show gets better on the drive home from this one. Do this tonight — not "this week."
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Close the books the same night.
Total the cash and app payments against the sales log, and chase any line that doesn't match while you can still picture the buyer.
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Pull sold cards out of inventory.
And log trades both directions — what left, what came in, and the value you put on each side.
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Compute your actual net.
Sales, minus the table fee, gas, food, and whatever you spent buying. The cash-box feeling lies; the number doesn't.
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Write down what people asked for that you didn't have.
That list is your buy list, and it's worth more than half of what's in the dollar box.
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Note what drew offers and what drew silence.
A card that got handled but not bought is mispriced or misplaced. Adjust the floor, the ask, or its spot on the table.
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Re-comp the shelf-sitters.
Anything heading to its third show without a bite gets fresh comps — the market may have moved while your sticker didn't.
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Re-pack like condition is money.
Because it is. Sleeves, toploaders, team bags — before the boxes go back in the car, not after.