The short answer
Yes, but slowly, and the first month will look like a failure. We bought bulk at $0.08 a card, listed 2,865 of them, and month one returned $0.08 per listed card. That is the cost of the cardboard back, and nothing else.
The money is in month six and month twelve, because the inventory keeps selling while you stop paying for it.
We are doing this right now, in public, with the numbers open. So instead of a business plan, here is the actual first month.
Month one, exactly as it happened
84 sales, $240.25 of revenue, and after everything eBay charged us the balance was $17.88. That figure does not include the cost of the bulk or a single hour of labour.
If you need this to pay in month one, it does not. We published the whole month line by line, including the parts that look bad.
Why it still works
A thousand cards cost about $76.00 and returned $82.94 gross in the first month. The lot has paid for itself before the second month starts, and the remaining 971 cards are still there.
That is the entire model. Not margin per card, but an inventory that keeps producing after it has already covered its cost.
What actually eats the profit
Fees take 21.5% and the label takes about 30.8% of an average sale, which leaves roughly $47.7 of every $100 before supplies and before your time. We measured all of it.
The other cost is the one people underestimate: listing. Every card has to be scanned, identified, priced and photographed, and at $2.86 a sale you need volume for that to make sense.
What we would tell someone starting
Buy less bulk than you think. A thousand cards is already 34 months of inventory at our sell through rate, and buying more before you can list what you have just moves cash into boxes.
Get the listing process fast before you scale the buying. And read what to pay first, because paying 10 cents instead of 3 turns a slow business into no business.
It works. It just does not work quickly, and anyone telling you otherwise is selling a course.
Frequently asked questions
- Can you actually make money selling Pokémon singles from bulk?
Yes, but not quickly. In our first month 84 of 2,865 listed cards sold for $240.25, leaving $17.88 after eBay charges and before the cost of the bulk or any labour.
- How much can you make from 1,000 bulk cards?
At our purchase price and sell through, about $82.94 gross in the first month against $76.00 of cost, with the remaining cards still to sell over the following months.
- What is the biggest cost when selling singles?
Fees and shipping. Together they take about 52% of an average sale in our numbers, before supplies and before your own time listing cards.
- How much bulk should a beginner buy?
Less than they expect. A thousand cards is already about 34 months of inventory at our sell through rate, so buying more before you can list what you have just converts cash into boxes.
The margin is decided after fees, postage and supplies, not before. The eBay profit calculator does that subtraction with your own numbers.
