What is the best way to ship a baseball card or sports card?
Let’s quickly go over the checklist to become the best sports card box breaker to make sure we didn’t miss anything:
You’ve managed to procure the hard-to-find wax (using WaxStat’s free wax box price comparison online tracking tool).
You have all of your equipment for sports card breaking in your home studio
You’ve selected the best camera to break open a case of 2022 Panini Prizm Racing Hobby Boxes,.
You’ve managed to figure out what the best card breaking supplies, top loaders and sleeves for those precious one-of-one RPA’s that you just hit.
Wow! Look at you! You’re an expert sports card wax box and case breaker. Life is good! Right? Wrong! You still need to make sure to pack and ship your cards to your lucky and loyal card breaking customers. Your audience of sports card fans are expecting to receive pristine cards that you just ripped and showed off on your live video stream.
Which sports cards should I top load and penny sleeve before shipment?
Before you pack your customer’s sports cards, make sure you sort them out. We like using a card sorting tray like this one from TitanShield with 15 slots. You’ll want to make sure you have enough slots for the number of teams you have. Usually two of these will work for baseball card and basketball card breakers. However, the National Football League and National Hockey League each have 32 teams, so you’ll need to have to alter your sorting technique when you do those card breaks.
Now you have your sorting down, make sure to sleeve and top load the proper cards. Here’s our personal guideline on deciding which cards to sleeve, top load or keep naked & raw:
Rookie cards: always penny sleeve rookie cards. If they are a first round pick, a starter or genuine superstar and future Hall of Famer, then top load them.
Veteran cards: If they are a household name, then I would penny sleeve at the very least. If they are a future Hall of Famer, then I would penny sleeve and top load them. If they hit a lot of home runs, throw a lot of strike outs, are a starting QB, or the NBA points leader, then I would at least penny sleeve them.
Serial numbered cards: Regardless if you hit a /5000, /100, /10, /5 or a one-of-one, make sure you top load and penny sleeve serial numbered cards. These are some of the most scarce cards of that particular product line, so your customers will eagerly be awaiting the arrival of these cards.
Autographed cards: Always penny sleeve and top load these cards. Make sure to handle these with care since this is likely the most important card in their shipment.
Patches: We always penny sleeve and top load cards that include a patch. Keep in mind that these cards are a little thicker, so make sure you have the proper card breaking supplies like a larger top loader and penny sleeves for thick cards.
When in doubt, put the card in a sleeve and top loader. I understand you may be concerned about costs and shipping weight, but I’d rather err on the side of over protection than have to answer to an upset customers because their favorite card was damaged by the mailman.
One last hint when dealing with top loaders: use painter’s tape to ensure the cards stay in their top loader. Even if you use the correct top loader size, there’s still a possibility that the card could move around and even fall out of the penny sleeve and top loader.
A little painter’s tape goes a long way especially if you hit a 21-22 NBA Hopps Josh Giddey Gold numbered to /10. The painter’s tape gives the card that little protection in case it gets shaken up in the USPS network.
How do I pack a sports card for a shipment?
Now that we have the cards sorted and the individual cards protected., the next step to consider is making sure you have all the cards together to stay organized and make sure your customer receives the correct team they purchased. Most sports card breakers are done in 3 ways:
Random team break: This happens when your customers pay a flat fee and they are randomly assigned a team. We use SLabstat’s card breaking software to give the customers the ability to claim a slot and then using the built-in randomizer, they are randomly assigned a team.
Pick-your-team break: Customers may not want to test their luck, so they’ll spend the appropriate market rate for a team. In a pick-your-team break, a customer will choose the team they want and pay the price that the sports card breaker has perviously determined.
Auction break: This is a slight variation of a pick-your-team break where your customers bid on a team using auction mechanics. Using SLabstat’s auction breaking software, you’ll be able to use auction mechanics to get your customers to bid up the prices for a team instead of depending on a flat fee. Auctions with a reserve price can usually lead to better profit margins for card breaking.
Many customers will buy into more than one random team or more than one pick-your-team, so it’s wise for you, the sports card breaker, to sort the teams and then put all the teams your customer purchased into the same shipment. This will save you costs and reduce any customer confusion as to where and when a shipment was sent. But before you slap on that postage stamp, you’ll first want to use a team bag, we like Ultra Pro’s team bags, and we give at least one bag per team. Depending on the size of the break, an entire team’s cards could fit into one team bag. Regardless if a customer hit a top loader worthy card, we put at least one top loader into each team bag. This provides the extra protection just in case your shipment gets tossed around in the US Postal Service network.
Now that the cards are sorted into team bags, you’ll want to put the cards into a bubble mailer (also known as a padded envelope). If your customer purchased enough teams, you may want to bubble wrap the entire set of team bags just to give the cards that extra level of protection. Make sure to fold the bubble mailer in a way that there’s very little room for the cards to move around in the shipment.
How much do I pay to ship a sports card?
While it may seem intimidating and complicated, we find that shipping a card within the USA is rather easy. There’s no more need for you to drive to the United States Postal Service office, stand in line and then likely get upsold on additional services you may or may not want.
When going into the world shipping logistics, we recommend that you have a standardized size of bubble mailer envelope to keep things simple. Once you know the dimensions of the padded envelope, then all you have to do is weigh it using a digital scale. The size and weight are all you need to use one of the many online postage tools and these are a few of our favorites:
In our opinion Pirate Ship is by far the very best. There is $0/month subscription and you pay-as-you-go. You enter in your address as a shipper, the buyer’s address, the weight and dimensions of the shipment and off you go.
If the dimensions are less than 12”x9” and the weight is less than 16 ounces, then you have the opportunity to use USPS First Class mail. This will usually get a package to the USA and US territories in less than a week. If it’s a neighboring state, it wouldn’t be out of the question if the package gets there in as few as 2-3 days.
You can also purchase USPS Priority for a nominal fee (and even use the free USPS supplies like boxes and envelopes and branded tape). They also offer USPS Priority Cubic Rate shipping - this means that you can easily ship larger shipments for far cheaper. This is also known as Box in a Bag shipping via USPS Priority Mail.
Pirate Ship now supports UPS, so you can easily ship larger packages using that alternative. We haven’t tried this feature yet, but we’ll update this article as we do that.
You can purchase additional USPS features such as insurance and signature confirmation.
Pirate Ship, like everybody else, will adjust the prices based on USPS and UPS guidelines, so you won’t get a better or worst deal anywhere else. If anything, you’re saving a whole lot of time using Pirate Ship.
We find that going direct with USPS is fine, but it’s so cumbersome. They need to spend some time in upgrading and improving their user interface and explaining what all the different features (such as insurance, certified mail, signature, etc.)
At the end of the day, everything goes through the USPS.com network especially the tracking number.
Shippo offers a few different plans including a pay-as-you-go service or a $10/month subscription.
You can find all the details on Shippo’s pricing page, but the $10/month subscription could help in automating some of your redundant shipping tasks.
Stamps.com is one of the pioneers of Internet postage. They largely depend on their existing customer base that spend anywhere from $17.99 to $24.99 to a custom price based on their needs.
We find that many of Stamps.com’s features are available using Pirate Ship.
Find and compare wax box prices at WaxStat.com
How do I ship a baseball card to places like Canada, Japan, South Korea, Asia, England, Europe or Africa?
Sports card box breaking is not just for those in the United States. There is a large and growing audience outside of the USA. One of the biggest problems that those in Canada, Asia, Europe, Africa or Australia have is that the distribution from Panini America, Topps, Fanatics, zerocool and Leaf leave a lot to be desired. Because of the slow distribution in those countries, many sports card breaker fans turn to American card case breakers for their fix of cardboard. This means that American sports card breakers need to be able to ship their cards.
Because shipping to another country is a lot more expensive, don’t be surprised that many of your foreign customers will wait for a few breaks to complete before they request you to ship out their haul. So make sure to stay organized and treat each break accordingly. Don’t just throw their cards into a stack and say you’ll take care of it later. After doing so many breaks, your memory of who hit which card will start to deteriorate over time and you’ll have a giant headache and a very upset customer.
Once you have bagged, and packaged the cards, make sure to consider a few things:
Shipping costs: These are usually higher and vary depending on your customer’s location. Make sure that you charged them the appropriate cost so you don’t have to eat into your profits.
Customs and duties: Consult with an expert on how to properly declare the price of the cards before you ship it over seas. The last thing you want is to under declare and risk the sports card being held (and possibly damaged) or over declare which will eat into your profits.
Whether it’s a football, baseball or Pokemon card, make sure to properly penny sleeve and top load the card. This will reduce the chance of a damaged Pokemon Charizard and an unhappy box break customer.
Should I have the cards graded before I ship to my customer?
We have covered the topic on how to and whether or not to grade your cards, so if your customer knows he wants to have his card graded, is this something that you should do on their behalf. If you’re breaking higher end products such as a football card break of 2021 Panini Immaculate Football Hobby Box or a 2021 Panini Eminence Football Hobby Case, you’ll know quickly which cards will command a higher value if graded.
Why should a sports card box breaker grade a card for a customer?
Make more money card breaking
You can easily add a new revenue stream and make more money by providing this added value service.
You’ll need to establish an account with PSA, BGS, SGC or other card grading companies and make sure you have enough volume to qualify for discounts. If you do not have enough cards to be graded for a volume discount, consider working with an LCS (local card store) to join their next group grading submission. This will reduce your work and potentially get the cards graded and finally shipped out to your customer.
Going the extra-mile for your card breaking customers
Not many sports card box breakers providing the grading service, so you can easily use this to differentiate.
The extra TLC usually ends up being a great marketing tool where your customer will end up speaking and referring other customers to you for future sports card breaks.
Whether your ripping open 2022 Panini Score Football or National Treasures, you may get a hit that your customer will want to graded. This big Babe Ruth graded a 9 via BGS.
The only downside of submitting card for grading on a customer’s behalf is that unknown of when the cards will come back. Because of the surge in value of high graded cards, the turnaround for economic grading services can stretch out several months. You potentially could be getting asked when their card will come back and you may or may not know the answer.
