Stocking Japanese cards for a card show

Sales at a card-show table

The band under the display case. Case pieces bring people across the aisle and give you something to talk about, but the cards that pay for the table, the travel and the time away are the ones a browser picks up without doing arithmetic.

Set the main price band from your previous event sales and current local sold listings. Allocate more units to the bands that produced completed sales.

• Case pieces — chase cards and slabs that stop traffic. Few units, big tickets, and the reason someone crosses the aisle instead of walking past. Where the margin holds on sealed versus slabbed is a separate decision from what the case does for footfall.
• The browsable band — the local price range that your own event data shows buyers can decide on quickly. Depth matters more than any single example price.
• The cheap tray — low-ticket cards that keep kids and casual collectors busy while the adult beside them makes up their mind.
• Sealed behind the table — sealed Japanese boxes read as proof that you source rather than flip, and they sell to the buyer who came to open something.

Clear Japanese-card selection

Because it is the one table not selling what the table beside it is selling. English singles put you in a price fight with your neighbours: same cards, same comps, and the seller who prints the lower number takes the sale. Japanese stock takes you out of that comparison. Different art, different set names, cards the person in front of you was not already quoted at the table they just left.

It also buys you a longer stop. You get asked what the set is, when it came out, why the art looks like that. A conversation about a card sells better than a price sticker, and it is the one part of a booth no online listing can copy.

Specialising only works if the stock backs it up. A Japanese-only booth whose binder pages repeat the same cards has spent the differentiation and given nothing back.

Budget by price band

Work backwards from your last table, not from the release calendar. What cleared, in which band, at what price: that is the buy list. New sets matter to your online listings. At a booth what matters is which trays were empty when you packed up and which ones came home full.

Whether you call the other side a distributor, a wholesale supplier or a middleman, the thing that decides your table is whether they will build to a list. Ask for some good Japanese cards and you get their judgment of good. Send tiers and you get yours.

Set the tiers against sold prices before you commit, on PriceCharting, Cardmarket, or whichever reference your customers quote at you. The aim is not to match those numbers at the table. It is to know where your cost has to sit for each band to still carry margin after the table fee.

• Tier 1 — the browsable band. Deepest tier, reordered every cycle, priced so nobody has to think.
• Tier 2 — step-ups. What a collector trades up to after working through tier 1. Fewer units, wider spread of Pokémon.
• Tier 3 — case pieces. Bought one at a time, against a regular you can name or a card people keep asking for.

Supplier brief

Name four things per tier, then one rule across all of them: which Pokémon, which era or sets, which rarity band, what you will pay, and nothing repeated. AR bulk, no duplicates is a preference. A tier that says fifty cards, AR, this list of Pokémon, nothing repeated, this budget, is an instruction someone standing in a Japanese shop can act on.

That is what a Velocity Bundle is built around. You send the list by DM and the lot gets put together against it. Lots run 50 or 100 cards in three grades: Starter at ¥50,000 for 50 or ¥100,000 for 100, Standard at ¥75,000 for 50 or ¥150,000 for 100, and Exclusive quoted per request. Every card is checked in hand before it ships.

Keep the list in a spreadsheet and send the same document back after each show with the result written beside each tier: this cleared, this sat, more of this next time. A supplier who can see your sell-through gets sharper every cycle. One who only sees a budget is guessing on your behalf.

• Pokémon by name — popular ones is not a list. Someone in a shop needs to know whose cards move at your table.
• Era or set — cards from the sets your regulars grew up on read differently to this month's release.
• Rarity band — AR, SAR or a mix. Rarity sets the ticket, and the ticket decides which tier a card lands in.
• Budget per tier — not one number for the whole order, or someone else decides the split for you.
• No duplicates, in writing — say it per tier and across tiers, so the same card does not arrive twice in two lots.

Leftover stock review

Duplicates. A lot that lands with the same cards repeated does not simply fail to sell. It takes the table space and the cash the next order needed, and it keeps taking them at every show until you write the stock off.

Cheap bulk is cheap for a reason. It is what remains after the sellable cards have been pulled out of it, and a booth exposes that faster than any other channel. An online listing can sit at no cost. A tray has to move in the hours the doors are open, in front of people who can see every other tray in the room.

Write duplicate limits and the required mix into the order brief. After each show, record each price tier as sold, partly sold, or unsold, then subtract unsold stock from the next request.

Pre-show checklist

Order on a cycle that closes before you pack the car, and start smaller than the table can hold. One tier filled properly teaches you more than a full booth of stock you did not choose, and a first order you can afford to be wrong about is the cheapest test a new supplier will ever get.

Send the tier list by DM on Facebook Messenger. The cards get sourced and checked in hand in Japan, and photos of the actual cards come back before anything is paid, so read them like a case at a show and say what you want changed. Payment runs through Wise or PayPal, in JPY with tax included; check what recourse each method gives you before you choose one. Shipping is quoted separately by destination and goes out tracked with FedEx. Import duty, VAT and clearance fees sit on your side of the border, so look up your own threshold before the first order rather than after the parcel lands.

If the booth needs sealed as well as singles, the Box List carries sealed Japanese boxes with dated JPY reference prices; confirm current price, condition, and availability in the quote. Graded singles are sourced per request and quoted one card at a time. Neither lane has a cart or a middleman in it: the person reading your list is the person buying the cards. Write tier 1 for your next show, Pokémon, era, rarity and budget, and send that as your first message.