This is NOT a paid endorsement or advertisement for Columbia Hobby. Simply a Cardboard Gold review of the company and their products from one customer’s view point.

“Is this brand (Cardboard Gold) legitimate?” That’s paraphrasing a tweet I recently read from someone in the hobby that I follow on Twitter. So, I decided to make a Cardboard Gold review.

I provided my opinion on Cardboard Gold, and the company that was selling 500 top loaders with 500 penny sleeves on eBay. The company is Columbia Hobby, and I’ve been a customer for supplies for a few years.

It all began a couple years ago when I was buying used top loaders in bulk. My aim was to pay four cents per top loader shipped in a medium flat rate box. On occasion (pre-COVID) I was able to find deals for flat rate boxes of top loaders for between 2 and 3 cents each shipped. Often, though, people were charging between 5 and 10 cents.

Top loaders became a need and I was unable to find them used at a good price. A little perusing on eBay led me to Columbia Hobby. An entire case of 1,000 top loaders for around $55 shipped. That comes out to 5.5 cents shipped for brand new top loaders. Columbia Hobby found a new customer.

Fast forward to the spring of 2020 and a world struck by a pandemic. Prices of top loaders skyrocketed as the demand far outweighed the now limited supply. Top loaders were now selling for upwards of 20 cents per shipped by most suppliers such as Columbia, BCW, and Ultra Pro.

My sales have increased which has also led to an increased need in top loaders. Fortunately, many of my fellow hobbyists have jumped in and helped me out by giving me deals on used top loaders and offering lots up for trade.

Recently, I have been visiting the aforementioned suppliers on a consistent basis in hopes that a fresh stock of top loaders have arrived. When I went shopping online a couple weeks ago you could order a case of top loaders from BCW…but the estimated ship date was December 31. Yes, more than a three months wait.

Then I saw the tweet with the Cardboard Gold listing. I offered up my seal of approval in tweet form then immediately went to eBay to snag a half case of top loaders from Columbia Hobby. The shipped price for 500 top loaders and 500 penny sleeves was $56.99, so almost exactly double the price of pre-COVID pricing. Still, at 11 cents per top loader it’s the best deal you can find at the moment with no waiting.

We often see people in the hobby flaunt their big wins. Profiting hundreds of dollars on the flip of a Topps online exclusive, clearing retail shelves, or buying low on Luka Doncic and Patrick Mahomes only to flip for a big win.

But where is all the transparency? We can learn more from our mistakes than from our victories in many cases. I’m just as guilty with articles on how to MAKE MONEY on baseball cards, or how much I made on this Craigslist collection (and still see sales almost daily from this collection), or taking advantage of discount sealed wax during Blowout’s Black Friday sales.

There are losses, too. Would you believe a hobby case of 2017 Bowman was less than $800 at presale? AND….I LOST money on my case! I also lost money buying a hobby case of 2015 Bowman Draft for just $500. Had I set those two cases aside a couple years I could have made big money, but I didn’t.

This article is about how I lost (well, I’m going to lose) money on a case of 2020 Allen & Ginter which was released last week. Full disclosure: I bought my case at retail price for $1,535 and knew I was going to lose money. Why? If you want to rip and flip cases you need to get near wholesale pricing. Find someone with connections and you can make it happen. In fact, had I waited about 12 hours I could have bought a case for $1,300.

When I was ripping and flipping cases back in 2016 and 2017 I was getting near wholesale prices from a breaker who lived near me. Hobby prices were also much different three years ago, and I was also moving base commons and insert cards on Sportlots. In fact, I was able to make about 30% back on my case by simply selling commons and inserts the week of release.

Why did I buy a case of Allen & Ginter fully knowing I was going to lose money? One word: entertainment. Allen & Ginter is tied to many memories and it’s always been a fun rip for me. So, even though I will likely lose a little the entertainment value will make it worthwhile.

Before I ever bought a case of baseball cards my line of thinking was they would be loaded with hits, and you can never lose money. I learned that is false fairly quickly. Allen & Ginter has been very good to me in terms of hits. Unfortunately, the 2020 purchase was about the worst.

Every case of Allen & Ginter I have purchased in the past has had a “case hit” and I’ve been able to sell a card for $300 to $500. Not so this time. My biggest hits were the two guaranteed RIP cards and they were the regular size cards numbered /99 of Clayton Kershaw and Pete Alonso. The Kershaw sold for $100 almost immediately, and the Alonso sold for $118.

The next highest priced sale? Would you believe it was a regular relic card of a reality star named Johnny Bananas. It sold for $50 within about two hours of listing.

I pulled a pair of 1/1 printing plates that sold for $25 (Trevor Hoffman) and $20 (Tommy LaStella).

A Fernando Tatis Jr. mini framed relic sold for $20, and a Keston Hiura mini framed autograph went for $30.

The rest is a bunch of low dollar sales, and as of this writing my gross sales total $724.12 on 91 transactions. After fees and shipping that net margin is a loss of nearly $1,000 and most of the higher value hits have already been sold. Ouch.

One of the reasons I wanted to share how I lost money on my hobby case of 2020 Allen & Ginter was because of a sales listing on the Blowout Forums. It was loaded with hits like a Jose Canseco mini framed auto numbered /25, five EXT minis, three A&G back no numbered cards, a stack of autographs, relics, and even a Nick Senzel N43 autographed box topper /15. Plus, the seller was throwing in a complete base set all for $300. It was 1/5 the cost of my case and it was loaded with far greater hits. I’ve been debating with myself on whether or not to purchase the lot in an attempt to make a dent in my Ginter losses this year.

The One Million Cubs Project began in December 2017. An idea to turn one million unwanted trading cards into one million Chicago Cubs baseball cards started just before Christmas that year. By Christmas week, a new Twitter account was created, web domains purchased, and a Wix website launched.

In the beginning, my Cubs card count was somewhere in the 50,000 range. The records are fuzzy early on in this project, and I didn’t even have an accurate count until several months in.

Nearly three years later the project is still pumping and I am having more fun than ever. It’s also a nice distraction while spending all of this time at home during a pandemic.

As of September 21, 2020, with an additional three packages that arrived in the mail my Cubs baseball card count surpassed the 499,000 mark (499,051 Cubs baseball cards to be exact). Having the 500,000 Cubs baseball card count so close gives me a bit of pause to reflect.

While it is a great milestone to reach…it’s the HALFWAY point. Nearly three years into the project I am only halfway home? One million is a lot. It takes a lot of card inventory to provide in trades, it takes a lot of money to pay for postage, and it takes a lot of time. This year my average mailday has hovered around 350 cards per day. Let’s break that number down in terms of the scale of this project.

I pulled 350 Cubs baseball cards and placed them in a standard storage box and weighed it. The total weight came out to 1 pound, 11 ounces, which has to go Priority Mail as it is above 16 ounces. Using PayPal shipping I entered the package details of 1 pound, 11 ounces and the size of the 400-count storage box (8″ x 4″ x 3″). Then, I used a midwest shipping address in my USPS zone (which will give me the lowest rate of any other zone). The postage amount comes out to be $7.64. If I were shipping to the west coast it would be about 50 cents higher and then the most economical option would be to place the box into a padded flat rate bubble mailer that runs at a cost of $7.75. For this exercise I’ll use the base rate of $7.64.

My average mailday includes Sunday as I just take the total amount of Cubs baseball cards over the course of the year and divide by the number of days. Over the course of one year (we’ll use 365 days even though 2020 will have 366 days), there will be a total of 127,750 Cubs baseball cards arrive. Using the base postage cost of $7.64 and 365 days that comes up to $2,788.60 in postage alone. Let’s extrapolate that out to one million total cards and it comes out to $21,828.57 in postage assuming every package contains 350 cards and the shipping cost is $7.64.

I feel that is a good base to use for calculation purposes because it’s a nice average. Many packages are medium flat boxes (2,000 to 2,500 cards) for $13.80 or large flat rate boxes (about 4,000 cards) for just under $20. On the other side, many trades consist of maybe 10 to 50 cards for $3.50 in postage.

Even if you don’t have Cubs baseball cards to offer up in trade, you can do your part by offsetting some of these costs by picking up some great baseball cards at great prices in my eBay Store. If you buy three or more cards you’ll receive an automatic 10% discount at check out.

Topps Fire is a retail exclusive to Target stores. It has a terrible return on investment for the flippers, and even collectors that want to recoup some of the box cost. But….it’s a very unique product that is much different from other baseball card releases.

A few years ago when Topps Fire debuted, it became a hot commodity on the sealed wax flipping market. So…I dove in. Topps Fire burned me. I was left with a few boxes I didn’t want, had to open, and lost a bit of money.

Still, I liked the product even though it was worth slightly more than a wax box of 1991 Fleer. Moving forward, I wanted to open some Topps Fire blasters, but just a few boxes.

Topps Fire released a couple weeks ago and my local Target store was stocked with them…until someone cleared the shelves. That someone was probably the same person peddling the $20 blasters on Facebook Marketplace for $35. Spoiler Alert: that same seller still has them for sale nearly three weeks later. They got burned by the Topps Fire.

Target was restocked with Topps Fire a week later, and my local store was chocked full of it. Probably 15 blasters and about a dozen of the “hobby” boxes that are $70 and include two autographs. Personally, I wouldn’t pay $50 for the guaranteed two-autograph boxes.

As I walked up to the card section there was a sign stating “more sports cards available at service desk.” I was actually in search of Stadium Club, and also hoping that some basketball was available at the service desk to flip to pay for any baseball I would buy.

All that was left at the service desk was a couple blasters of Topps Chrome and a couple hanger packs of Chrome. Limit one each per customer. I passed as that ship has sailed.

Topps Fire it is. I grabbed five blasters as that puts me right around $100, and knowing that there is likely no more than $40 or $50 in cards I pull. Again, I’m a collector on this product and I feel that $100 spent will be fun opening the blasters. Not everything about the hobby is ROI.

The young lady at the check out lane told me she could only sell me four of the boxes. That was perfectly fine to me. She added, “I don’t know what is going on, but sports cards are crazy.”

My total spent on the four blasters was around $85. I pulled TWO autographs from the four boxes. One of the autographs was even numbered /50, and it’s a player I have never heard of, Rangel Ravelo of the St. Louis Cardinals. It sold for $5 shipped, so that tells you the type of value inside Topps Fire.

The other autograph, as of this writing, is still for sale in my eBay Store. It is a rookie auto of Jake Rogers from the Detroit Tigers, and I have it listed for $6.

Surpisingly, I did pull a card that sold for more than $20. It was a gold parallel of Luis Robert, and it sold for $23 shipped.

Even though the return was not a concern to me, I do feel it necessary to report my sales since I brought it up. Most of the cards I listed have sold with a few dollar cards still available along with the Rogers auto. My gross sales to date are $68, which is better than I expected.

Even though the return was not a concern to me, I do feel it necessary to report my sales since I brought it up. Most of the cards I listed have sold with a few dollar cards still available along with the Rogers auto. My gross sales to date are $68, which is better than I expected.

Now, let’s take a look at the Chicago Cubs cards from 2020 Topps Fire. First, I want to share probably my favorite base card to date from 2020. Sammy Sosa.

Admittedly, I was upset with how Sosa’s Cubs career came to an end, but over time I want to see him back in the good graces of the organization and welcomed back. He was such a big part of the 1990’s not only in Chicago, but baseball in general. Also…this Topps Fire design screams the 90’s.

Adbert Alzolay gets a rookie card in Topps Fire, and I love it.

Another Cubs rookie making this year’s Topps Fire set is Robel Garcia, although he is no longer with the team. And in just four blaster boxes I am well on my way to a Robel Garcia rainbow. I have the base…

And the flame parallel.

And the blaster box exclusive gold mint parallel.

And the orange parallel serial numbered /299.

Back to the base with Kyle Schwarber. Look closely, and that bat looks destroyed. There are a lot of marks on the barrel of the bat.

You can’t have Bryant

Without the Rizzo.

Moving on to a parallel and insert.

Here’s another Cubs rookie and this is the gold parallel of Danny Hultzen.

Finally, Jason Heyward gets an insert card in the Arms Ablaze set. It appears all of the insert sets are gold.

That was a fun rip. In all, I pulled 14 Cubs cards in the four blasters which I was very happy with. What do you think about Topps Fire?