I’ve spent most of this year on one side of the hobby, with collectors who sort their binders by card number and know exactly which parallel they’re still missing. A few weeks ago I got a look at the other side, when a Formula 1 card trader got in touch to brainstorm a few ways to grow his business, like setting up an online shop.
A lot of his buying and selling is done at card shows, where deals happen fast across the table. He would count his cash before and after and add up his card payments to know whether a show had been worth it, but what he had actually bought and sold that day mostly lived in his head, and he was finding it hard to keep track of.
That felt like something that could be fixed quite quickly, so I put together an MVP in a day. It’s super simple: take a picture of the cards, type in the amount, and the same for a buy or a trade. Because we already have the full catalogue from the collector app, he can match each card up (by hand for now), and his stock slowly starts to exist somewhere other than his memory.
It’s very basic, and he seems happy with it so far. I don’t know yet whether it goes anywhere, but it’s been a fun little window into the other side of the table, and a part of the hobby I hadn’t really thought about until now.