My first time Vending at a Con!

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Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates Price and Coverage Match limited By state law, most people don't realize how much of their personal information is being bought and sold every day. Data brokers are making billions, pulling details about you from public records and the Internet, then packaging and selling it, usually without your consent. That's how your information lands in the hands of scammers, spammers, even stalkers. It's why you get endless robocalls and why ads seem to follow you everywhere. That's where Aura comes in. Aura actively removes your data from broker sites and keeps it off. They also instantly alert you if your information shows up in a breach or on the dark web. But Aura goes beyond data protection. With one app you get a vpn, antivirus, password manager, spam, call protection, dark web monitoring, and even up to $5 million in identity theft insurance. All Beckett by 24. 7 US based fraud support. Other companies might sell just credit monitoring or even just a vpn. Aura gives you all of it together at the same price Competitors charge for just one service. Start your free trial today at aura.com safety. Protect yourself now at aura.com safety what is up everyone? It's just me, the Pokemon Cave. So this is not going to be a typical episode this week, you see because, well, a lot of crap has happened. My co host and I were supposed to record what now? 2 weeks ago Stuff came up on my end. I think back then Goldin record. We had to skip a week which is why there was no episode last week. We were supposed to record last week on I think it was Tuesday night. Co host Goldin do it. She wasn't feeling mentally up to it. That's fine. I had a lot of work to Do. I was trying to get stuff done, so on and so forth. We figured, okay, you know what, we'll record Friday night, this past Friday night, you know, we'll both be better. At that point, Friday night came, I was up to my eyeballs and work trying to prep for a Comic Con that has just ended yesterday as I'm recording this Sunday that I'm recording this. So she bailed on me Friday night. I was too damn busy trying to figure out stuff with the Comic Con and trying to get things priced out in the 11th hour. So we just kind of left it at that. Fast forward to today Sunday. The plan was, okay, let's just try and get things reorganized. You know, I'll come downstairs to my workshop and I'll troubleshoot my computer because my desktop was being funky. I figured, okay, you know, it's not a big deal. I can should be a theoretically an easy fix. Get that sorted out. Fix my son's Game Boy color because it needs a new screen. And then I'll record our typical podcast episode simply by myself for this week. But it is what it is and no big deal. Well, that started at 9:30 in the morning. It is now quarter to four. From 9:00 clock in the morning until 1:30 in the afternoon. I was on the phone with a repair guy and then in person with the repair guy trying to fix my desktop because at first the desktop wouldn't display onto my monitor, which is behind my laptop that I'm using. If you're watching the video version of this, you might be wondering why is things at a different angle. It's because I'm using my crappy ass laptop and I'm using a off brand camera HD app because apparently the app on the laptop doesn't want to record using my camera for some stupid reason. I don't know if it would record if I took that camera off and recorded it with the laptop webcam. But the laptop webcam sucks. The laptop sucks. So this is how we're going to be doing it now. So Yu-Gi-Oh I was working on that until about 1:30 in the afternoon. Now my desktop's gone. It went back with the guy to figure out what's wrong with it. We did figure out that potentially the monitor was pooched. The monitor boots up, you can see the monitor logo screen and then it just goes block states, no source or whatever and shuts down. It might be the monitor. I mean I can't get to menu options on the monitor for some reason. Thank God I still have the manual So I can take a look at that. However, like, I don't know what the hell's going on with it. We took it out of my recording studio, hooked it up to my monitor that's in my workshop, turned it on and long. Behold, I get startup from the computer on the monitor in my workshop. So cool. All right, maybe the monitor was a problem, but then the computer went boot to Windows. We could get it to bios, but we Goldin get any further from there. So we fought and fought and fought with it and turns out, okay, well, you know what, it's either the power supply, it's either GPU potentially, or SSD or Windows. So I'm not sure. Actually, as I'm recording this now, my wife has texted me. So I'm going to try and multitask because I don't want to stop this recording. So, Yu-Gi-Oh I'm in a boatload of issues. But today's episode is not going to be a typical episode. I want to explain to you what has happened over the weekend, especially at the Comic Con. You see, this is the first time I've ever done a Comic Con. First time ever vending. And boy, oh boy, was things interesting. So one second here. Salads, that's. There we go. Trying to tell my wife to bring home salads. So going into this, I didn't know what to expect because when you walk around a convention, you notice things differently in that sense than you do when you're physically in it. For case in point, Collingwood Comic Con, which is where I went. Okay, doesn't matter. So for instance, the Collingwood Comic Con through pop culture is where I went for reference. It's like a few blocks away from My House. So we didn't even. For reference, we don't drive, but we literally just threw everything on the back of our wagon and wheeled the stuff down the street. So when we got there, got there about 8:30 in the morning, give or take, the con opens at 10 for people. So you had to, if you showed up at 9:45 or later, they weren't going to let you set up. I wanted to show up at 8:30ish, because I didn't know how long it would take me to set up and I didn't want to like scramble to get set up. So I. We got there early. Immediately as we're walking down the street, I forgot our six foot folding table. So I had to run back to the house and grab that. They did have tables there. However you pay for a table for reference point, it costs $104.75 if I remember correctly. And that is for a six foot, bring your own table space. That is for a wall section instead of being in the middle of the Collingwood Legion. And if you wanted hydro, it was an extra $20, I think. But we didn't really need hydro. We just. We could bring a battery bank kind of thing that you could plug an actual outlet into and we're Goldin The original idea was to bring my laptop just so I could price things out quickly and just leave the phone as like a payment method for like square and all that stuff. But Yu-Gi-Oh forgot the table, had to run back and grab that. I brought my charging cable for my phone. Just the charging cable though, not the actual plug for some stupid reason. Got all the way there. Realized that it's a USB C to USB C. So it wouldn't plug into the USB port on the power bank. So it was freaking useless. However, thankfully, I think only Tribute down to like 75, 5, 68%, something like that on my, my phone by the end of the con. At 3 o' clock in the afternoon. We forgot tape, so I Goldin tape my banner to the front of our table. And then I realized that the table. So I have a 3 foot by 4 foot banner, the table is lower than 3ft, so we had to be quite interesting with that. But while I'm setting up, my wife went out to go get me a coffee and a bagel so I could have breakfast. Because I got up at five o' clock in the morning to try and reprice or get things priced out before we left and totally forgot about breakfast. Barely had enough time to have a shower. It was rough. And then while my wife was away, I'm, you know, setting up. I'm being, I'm just in my own little corner, quiet as I can be, and just setting up. And there's this guy kind of on the opposite side of our legion, okay? And he's like, he's just being a rude son of a bitch. I sat down, I thought, holy shit. Like, that guy is rude. He's obnoxious. Like, are these what these vendors sound like before customers come in? Because when customers come in, especially when I was a customer, every vendor I went to was polite, relatively polite. So I'm like, damn. Like, this guy is cutthroat. He's like, you know, I don't give a F about what you need or what you need or this or that. And I'm like, holy shit. Like, you're an asshole. Turns out he was the head of the vending company, at least that branch. So I'm like, oh, what the hell? But then as the day went on, he became softer. I would say maybe, maybe a little softer. So I was like, okay, maybe he was just having a rough morning. You know, who knows? We all have rough mornings. Hell, I was having a hell of a rough morning. So, I mean, that kind of freaked me out a little bit, you know, if you have listened to previous podcasts, you'll realize that I have also ADHD and autism. I overanalyze every detail of everything around me. Ironically, I forgot to take my meds yesterday morning, so I went to the Comic Con on medicated. That's the word I was looking for. And just having a full blown panic attack from 10 o' clock until 3 o' clock to the point where, like, for instance, if you're watching the video version of this, you know, I have a wedding ring. I've been married for 14 years. Yu-Gi-Oh 14. My hand was so freaking swollen that it had essentially engulfed my wedding ring. That's how freaking stressed out I was. I was like watching every single person like a bloody hawk when they came up to her chart booth. I also had my kids watching people rummaging through the singles, making sure nothing slipped into a Beckett or into a hand. I had my daughter watch a grandmother because the grandmother was being a little too fingery with Pokemon coins and kind of like tucking some into her hand. And I caught the tail end of it out of the corner of my Yu-Gi-Oh and I told her, hey, by the way, so those coins that you got there, those are $2. The ones slightly behind it are a little bit cheaper, but the ones in front are a little more expensive by like a buck or two. If you're interested in some, I can cut you a deal on them. I'm not hard set on those prices. I can be very flexible. And once she realized I was talking to her, just kind of neatly tucked them back in and walked away. Yu-Gi-Oh she was being a little weird with her grandson. You got to be careful of the granny sometimes, right? You know, grannies are notorious for. For trying to get one past you. At least from what I've seen. Sometimes there were a handful of people that want to do trades. 99.9% of them were children. Beautiful. Thank God I didn't have any of those. I'm trying to trade up crap. I mean, sometimes that's cool, sometimes it's not. This one kid I remember, he came up, he's like, you know, Would you be interested in a trade? And I always tell the same thing to everybody who says that. I always go, it really depends on what you got. I will hear you out, but I'm not going to be dead set on doing a trade with you if there's something there that doesn't tickle my fancy most times or not. If I'm going to do a trade it's because I want something in your Pandora or something in your possession for my own personal collection. I'm not going to trade just to quickly throw a label on it and put it back onto my table because that's just more work for me. I don't want to freaking do more work. But if you have something interesting like a Ghastly Haunter Gengar that I need or something in that realm, I might trade you for it. And it will be a one for one trade because I want that for my personal collection. If anything, I might even do it in your favor a little bit. So he found he had a Charizard. It was like a Charizard Ex. It was like a 25$30 card, give or take, something goof like that. He ended up getting, I believe two Japanese booster box that had labeled at $4 each, which was slightly undervalued for them. And then a. Oh, was it a PSA? I think it was a PSA 8 reverse hollow haunter from Evolutions. Which, okay, I had it valued at $20. Is it $20 maybe because of PSA, but I mean, honestly. Yu-Gi-Oh not really. So I ended up, I gave him those two packs and Haunter and $5 and he gave me the, the Charizard Ex. It wasn't graded or anything. It was just raw that I did turn around and put back on my table for like 25. So I mean obviously he, he did get the better trade. But still, like I don't care. Like, I mean the Charizard are kind of cool. I actually, I might actually still have it right here. Yes, I do actually. Yu-Gi-Oh that guy. It's the Charizard ex. 215 out of 197 from Obsidian Flames. Yu-Gi-Oh I believe that was the $25. Ish. And then of course, you know, my daughter wanted to sell her two Eevees. The EV exit 167 of 131 from pre. The hell is Pre? I don't know. And then the regular EV from Twilight Masquerade number 188 out of 167. She had those on my booth that she wanted to sell, hoping to sell them and have her own spending money. But unfortunately they didn't sell, which, hey, you know what? Sometimes they sell, sometimes they don't. It's, you know, it happens is what it is. Now I was selling Pokemon singles, Pokemon graded stuff, Pokemon toys, like old Pokemon toys, that kind of stuff. I also had some Star wars toys from like the 90s era, some Funko Pops, Yu-Gi-Oh Gi oh decks, like sealed Yu-Gi-Oh Gi oh decks, stuff like that. Ironically, everything that was on the shelf behind me, nobody even looked at it or even bought anything or inquired about anything. It was all anything that was on my table. So going forward, if I decide to do this again next year, I'm gonna push that stuff forward so it's more in line with my table and hopefully people get more eyeballs on it rather than it being behind us. And I always tried to make sure that we weren't covering the stand. You know, we would sit off side of it. So then you could still see the full stand, everything like that or the shelving unit. So it wasn't like the fact of like you physically Goldin see it. It's just, it wasn't front and center and you live and learn. But in total, honestly we went into it with, you know, you always take into account what you have in your cash drawer. So we had like 400, $452 or something goofy like that in our cash drawer. Between cash transactions, 1e transfer and 3 square payments, we walked away with just shy of $600 in everything. So then you minus your cash drawer or sorry, not 600, like 900 and something. We had like 900 and something dollars in total. So then you minus your cash drawer, you minus what it costs to actually vend there. I think we walked away with a profit of like 400 and something like low four hundreds. We also spent $70. Our daughter and our son bought a couple of things from some vendors. I, I ran over to another vendor when there was like a lull in people coming into the con so I could buy a electric charged Pikachu stuffy that talked. It was still in box. The box is rough as hell, but it's like three years old. It just looked freaking cool. He was selling it for like $25. So I was like, hell Yu-Gi-Oh I will buy that for 25 bucks. The box is destroyed, but I don't give a shit. It's going to go in my collection room because that is so freaking cool. I love that. But you know, in total like we, we had A good time. It was very, very stressful, but we had a very good time. I had one guy want to do a trade who was a bit of a jackass. You see, he had, he had some cars that were not well. He had graded cards that he was trying to offload. He had two of them in particular that he gave to me and said, you know, what can you do for these? It was a ditto V from. Most people don't realize how much of their personal information is being bought and sold every day. Data brokers are making billions, pulling details about you from public records and the Internet, then packaging and selling it, usually without your consent. That's how your information lands in the hands of scammers, spammers, even stalkers. It's why you get endless robocalls and why ads seem to follow you everywhere. That's where Aura comes in. Aura actively removes your data from broker sites and keeps it off. They also instantly alert you if your information shows up in a breach or on the dark web. But Aura goes beyond data protection. With one app you get a vpn, antivirus, password manager, spam, call protection, dark web monitoring, and even up to $5 million in identity theft insurance. All Beckett by 24, 7 US based fraud support. Other companies might sell just credit monitoring or even just a vpn. Aura gives you all it together at the same price competitors charge for just one service. Start your free trial today at aura.com safety. Protect yourself now@aura.com safety. God, I can't remember but it's like a $12 card. It was a psa I believe. But even like recent sold of that PSA card on ebay was a $12 plus shipping. So $12 plus shipping for that thing. And then he had a Charizard. Now the problem with the Charizard is that yes, it was graded. However it was graded by degree grading. I believe that's the company, that newest new ISH1 down in the states with the green label. I tried looking it up on ebay and stuff like that to see comparisons because you're not really going to find that grading company, especially on ebay. A PSA version for, you know, I think it was like a PSA 8 and he had a D grade or degree 8. PSA 8 was selling for I think 90 bucks. 80, $90 PSA 10 was selling for like 180ish, give or take. But this is not PSA, it's degree or whatever. So I knocked a little bit off of the price comparison because it's not PSA not by much. Like 10 bucks. So I told him, I said, look, ditto was $12. That if it was PSA, you're looking at, like, 80. Honestly, man. I like. I'm like, I'll offer you. I'll offer you $80 for both. Because, you know, I'm looking at maybe $70 for the Charizard, honestly. And, you know, the ditto was 12 bucks, so there's 82ish. If you're lucky, maybe. Maybe $85 for both. And he's like, oh, no, no, no, no. We're way to hell off. I'm like, okay, enlighten me. How. How do you figure we're way off here, bud. Like, maybe I missed something that I didn't see. It happens. Please explain. He's like, no, no. This card sells for, like, 180, $190. Like, Yu-Gi-Oh if it was a PSA 10. It's not PSA. It's not a 10. So where the heck do you find this 180, $190 from? He's like, well, it's freaking Charizard. Like, I don't give a crap. I don't care if it's freaking Arceus. Who gives a shit? It's Charizard. Nobody cares. In fact, I have Charizards right on my. My table. No one's buying them. In fact, people are buying all my sealed stuff, you know, packs, Japanese single packs, Japanese booster boxes. Ironically, I had Journeys together, booster box at $6 each, give or take. I think might have been $6 each. All I had, like, maybe eight of them all but one of them had a freaking, like, decent hit in them. We would. We would sell a pack, they would walk away. They would come back like, five, ten minutes later. You guys wouldn't happen to have a sleeve, would you? I just pulled this, and they show me, like a full art, whatever. And they were like ultra rares and stuff like that. Or like Illustration Rare like really good freaking heads. I'm like, oh, hell Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh Really? We got sleeves. Hell, we got top loaders. Here. Go. You got to a point where we just. We would sell a pack and be like, here, here's a sleeve just in case. Because people have been pulling some weird crap out of these. So, like, here's the sleeve just in case. If you use it, use it. If you don't, then whatever, you've got an extra sleeve. And the very last pack, the guy buys it. I'm like, here's a sleeve. And I'm like, just in Case he's like, oh screw it, let's open it right here, right now, man. It's like you know, 10 to three or whatever. Like, Yu-Gi-Oh why not? Let's, let's see what the hell you pull. So he opens it, pulls and gets a hollow rare. Mike. Well, at least it's a hollow rare. You know, it's not, it's not a non hole, but you know, just goes to show that even journeys together, you can pull some decent freaking heat out of it or at least from our, our packs at the day. And I think that's why our packs kept selling so quickly was because like people would pull something ridiculous like, oh Yu-Gi-Oh I bought the packs from over there. So more and more people were coming to our booth. It was really, really fun. Again, stressful. I feel bad for the people that were beside us. The guys beside us were selling nothing but Star wars figurines, like sealed figurines. They weren't making very many sales. I think all day they had cheat. Most people don't realize how much of their personal information is being bought and sold every day. Data brokers are making billions, pulling details about you from public records and the Internet, then packaging and selling it, usually without your consent. That's how your information lands in the hands of scammers, spammers, even stalkers. It's why you get endless robocalls and why ads seem to follow you everywhere. That's where Aura comes in. Aura actively removes your data from broker sites and keeps it off. They also instantly alert you if your information shows up in a breach or on the dark web. But Aura goes beyond data protection. With one app, you get a vpn, antivirus, password manager, spam call protection, dark web monitoring, and even up to $5 million in identity theft insurance. All Beckett by 24, 7 US based fraud support. Other companies might sell just credit monitoring or just a vpn. Aura gives you all of it together at the same price Competitors charge for just one service. Start your free trial today@aura.com safety. Protect yourself now@aura.com safety three, maybe four sales and not very well. It got to the point where like it was a father and son. The son was like older, I would say, like he almost looked, I don't know, early 20s or so. Like he to some was like, you know, anybody who walked up to even look at the booth, he was like, you know, we're very, very flexible on price. Don't go by the sticker price. We will make you have one heck of an offer all the way to the Point where like by one o' clock in the afternoon, he was telling people straight up, whatever you see on sticker, it's half off. Now. If that box is $100, it's now 50. He was just trying to push everything humanly possible. And he still wasn't getting sales, but, I mean, neither did we for Star wars stuff, but we were getting sales like crazy for Pokemon. And then we found out there was a vendor on the other side of the of the venue who was also selling Pokemon, but was a clear, clear scalper selling sometimes in some cases, the same packs as us for triple or quadruple what we were selling them for. We had one person come up to us and the lady goes, holy shit, you got a pack of Viva Vultures? I'm like, yep, I think I was selling for like $8. It's like, shit, $8. Yu-Gi-Oh I'll buy right now. I'm like, okay. Turns out buddy on the other side had a couple packs of Viva Voltage that he was selling for $24 a pack. Yu-Gi-Oh $24 a pack for Viva Vultures. Are you nuts? I heard he had journeys together, selling them for upwards of 13 to $14 a pack. Meanwhile, we're selling them for six. Our Japanese packs were $4 a pack straight across the board. Our booster boxes were a hundred dollars. We had two Mega Symphonia and one Munkus Zero left when we went into the conversation. And each one of those boxes sold without any issues. So it just goes to show, if you're a scalping piece of crap, people are going to call you out for it and they're not going to support you. But if you have your prices as fair and you're friendly and willing to work with people, people will come back to your booth all day long. In closing, was it stressful? Yu-Gi-Oh it was. I mean, a hell of a lot of stuff has been going on around here behind the scenes. We're dealing with constant issues at the moment. So I have been falling behind on everything, whether it be the podcast, whether it be my sponsorship stuff, pricing things out for ebay, like my business on ebay, which, again, I have a legit freaking business that was on Squarespace and Shopify. Both of those two companies screwed me over Shopify worse than Squarespace. So until I can actually afford to own a brick and mortar store, I'm just gonna hang out on ebay as a legit business on ebay. And, you know, sales are doing good there. I'm getting a lot of exposure, a lot of people Followed me simply from my logo name on the. At the con. That was really cool. I know some people have been listening to the podcast from the. From the con and everything. Biggest takeaway, though, the vendors. A lot of the vendors were extremely kind. Two ladies in particular. One lady was selling like, like magnets and stuff, like handmade magnets. She came over and gave a handful or one or two of them to our daughter. Another one, she was selling like handmade ducks, like these giant ducks. She gave our daughter and our son some stuff. We periodically talked to both vendors throughout the day if. If they were able to leave their booth for a minute or if we were able to leave our booth. I spoke to another vendor who came over. We're at the end of the day and bought a couple stuff off of us and followed me on Instagram. You know, he had a booth kind of off to the right of us, selling Pokemon and games and stuff like that. It was. It was really cool. A couple things on there that I really wanted, but, you know, for instance, Pokemon White 2, I believe it was. I think it was White 2 or Pokemon White for like $150. I really wanted it, but I didn't want to spend $150. I didn't want to ask him to do a deal on it because I don't need it. I would have wanted it, but I don't need it. And I'm not going to take money out of that guy's Beckett I mean, that's not fair. I had a tremendous amount of time, a great time there. The vendors were amazing and I would definitely do it again next year, and I probably will. But Yu-Gi-Oh On that note, thank you, everyone. My co host and I will see you again next week for a brand new episode. I hope to God I'm not in this setup when we do do the podcast next week. We're supposed to be recording on Wednesday, so that's like three or four days from now. I hope I have my computer back by then. If not, you'll see in me in this awful setup. But take care, everyone. We will see you again next week. Bye now. With the American Express Platinum card, I can unlock experiences like no other. Since I'm always booking my next trip. I love that I can earn points on travel. Plus I get a resi benefit. So you, you know, I'm hitting the restaurants everyone's talking about and you can find out your welcome offer after you apply, which could be as high as 175,000 points for experiences like no other. There's nothing like Platinum. Learn more@americanexpress.com Explore Platinum Terms apply Most people don't realize how much of their personal information is being bought and sold. Every day. Data brokers are making billions, pulling details about you from public records and the Internet, then packaging and selling it, usually without your consent. That's how your information lands in the hands of scammers, spammers, even stalkers. It's why you get endless robocalls and why ads seem to follow you everywhere. That's where Aura comes in. Aura actively removes your data from broker sites and keeps it off. They also instantly alert you if your information shows up in a breach or on the dark Web. But Aura goes beyond data protection. With one app, you get a vpn, antivirus, password manager, spam call protection, Dark Web monitoring, and even up to $5 million in identity theft insurance, all Beckett by 24. 7 US based fraud support. Other companies might sell just credit monitoring or just a vpn. Aura gives you all of it together at the same price competitors charge for just one service. Start your free trial today@aura.com safety protect yourself now@aura.com safety.