Virtual card show?

[polakoff]

I am in the early stages of development of this concept with a few other folks -- it is not my intent to make a dime on this endeavor (will likely lose some money and lots of time) but before I get too far down the road I figured I would pitch it here to see if it is actually something that would be of interest to people.

The idea is a virtual card show that would work like this:


-Initially, 40 to 50 "vendors." The intent would be to grow this pool for subsequent "shows" but the initial one would be kept smaller. Prospective vendors would fill out an application and be vetted by me and my team. What kind of vetting, you may ask? Nothing too complicated -- the application would essentially ask for what sorts of inventory you have available, your experience selling (forums? ebay? shows?), and your technological capacity. The idea here is that a) vendors would be seen as trustworthy folks as they are being vetted, and b) we would have vendors selling a wide range of items and not just a bunch of people selling the same things. "Tables" would likely be free for vendors. There is a small possibility something nominal like $5 or $10 may be the cost, but it is my intent to make it happen completely free so vendors keep everything they make.

-Buyers would visit our webpage where they would find a list of vendors. The list could also be sorted/filtered by any number of "tags" dealers may apply to themselves. For example, I could filter by vendors who say they sell vintage and commons and off-grade.

-When a buyer selects a vendor, he is taken to the vendor's "room" where the vendor is set up behind a webcam. Buyers will enter the room on mute automatically and the vendor can unmute them at will. There is also a chat function, so if a vendor is talking to another customer, you could type out a request. Of course, nothing beats digging through boxes (for me) or looking at eye candy in a display case. But the idea here is there is a personal interaction with buyer to dealer, and buyer can ask dealer for particular cards. Of course the dealer may not always be able to find everything in his inventory at that exact moment, but the dealer could get the customer's information to get back in touch later. In a way it's like a matchmaking service between card collector and card dealer.

-There would also be a function by which a customer could schedule a one-on-one appointment with a dealer for a time outside the show. Vendors would maintain their schedule availability.

-There would also be a "lobby" room where we would run contests and giveaways, and allow for general live chatting about cards.


I would hope this "show" would run at least once a month for 4-5 hours, and of course, scheduled appointments could be made as well with dealers. If successful it could bump to greater frequency. I would also hope this outlasts the coronavirus as plenty of locales in this country don't have a card show to speak of.

This is the only place on the internet I'm sharing this idea as I sort of implicitly trust this community and don't think the idea will be stolen here (and if it is, someone else will get to put in the hard work and cost of trying to make it work, so that's fine!). But I am interested in any and all feedback, especially the type that tells me if you'd have interest in this sort of setup as a buyer or a vendor, or if you think there would be general interest in the idea. I promise I won't get my feelings hurt.