Trial #003: How I Made $4,581 Selling Pokémon Cards and Jewelry on eBay

Written By Kenneth Olsen

How $53 in shipping supplies turned into $4,581.39 selling vintage jewelry and Pokémon cards on eBay

Make it stand out

This one didn't start with a business plan. It started with my grandmother, who used to run a jewelry store, calling me up because she had a house full of inventory that had been sitting untouched for years and she wanted it gone. Around the same time, I dug up some old Pokémon card collections that had been boxed up and forgotten. No spreadsheet, no market research — just two piles of stuff that needed a home.

Budget Breakdown

The inventory itself cost me nothing. My grandmother handed over her leftover jewelry supply, and the Pokémon cards came from collections I already had lying around. The only real money spent was on the supplies to actually run the shop:

  • Bubble mailers (200-pack): $15

  • Top loaders & penny sleeves for cards: $20

  • Shipping sleeves (100-pack): $10

  • Card photography holder: $8

  • Printer ink & scotch tape: a few dollars, incidental

Total startup cost: roughly $53. That's it. No wholesale lots, no auction hauls, just packaging really.

Pricing Strategy**

For the cards, I used TCGplayer and Collectr to scan each one and pull its market value, then adjusted up or down based on condition. Anything worth a decent chunk, I listed with a "make an offer" structure instead of a flat price, so I could negotiate rather than leave money on the table. For descriptions, I mostly leaned on eBay's built-in AI-generated listing descriptions with a few tweaks — it saved a ton of time and the listings still converted.

Key Metrics

  • 41 total units sold — 16 Pokémon cards, 25 jewelry pieces

  • $4,581.39 in total sales

  • One single Pokémon card sold for $1,200

  • $852 in combined eBay fees and shipping costs

  • Net profit: roughly $3,676 after supplies and fees

  • Time investment: under 30 minutes a day — usually 15 minutes to bulk-upload listings, and 10-15 minutes to prep shipments, which I'd drop off at the post office whenever I was already out running errands with the family

Operational Challenges

  • One minor refund of $25 on a card that turned out to be slightly creased — the only real complaint out of 41 sales

  • A few weeks of slow sales, which I traced back to my own inconsistency — not refreshing listings or discounting stuff that had been sitting

  • Response time turned out to matter more than expected. Answering eBay messages quickly, paired with a clean review history, seemed to build enough buyer trust to keep sales moving

Current Status

Still running. I'm pushing remaining inventory when I can, and cycling through discounting or reorganizing anything that's sat too long without a bite.

Why This One Gets Trial #003

The money's good, but the real story here is that this hustle basically ran on stuff that already existed . A family favor and a box of Pokémon cards that turned into real cash for less than an hour a day. It's also the first trial where a single item outsold the entire startup budget by over 20x. That's the kind of asymmetry worth paying attention to.

Trial #003 at a Glance

  • Starting budget~$53 (supplies only — inventory was free)

  • Total revenue: $4,581.39

  • Expenses (fees + shipping):$852

  • Net profit~$3,676

  • Units sold41 (16 cards, 25 jewelry)

  • Time invested: Under 30 min/day

  • Biggest single sale $1,200 (Pokémon card)

  • Status: Still active

Want to see what's currently listed? Check out the shop: thegoodsigotem on eBay

Kenneth Olsen
Next

Trial #001: The One That Started It All