Sportlots

[dnilgis]

Hello, this is my first post. I was reading a thread on here the other day where someone posted a letter from sportlots to all dealers, talking about how they hired a web developer to rebuild the framework of the site and so forth....
How has some wall street type hedge fund or competing/complementary business not bought this business for millions upon millions?

maybe some things are sacred and purely for the hobby and by all indications this is the case. The owner was fretting about having to raise the price by .02 to help cover the cost of hiring this developer. amazing

dnilgis

[swarmee]

IMO, the big money hedge funds would go after something like COMC which has a large warehouse of cards and actually does the full legwork rather than a site like sportlots where all of the cards are still owned and mailed by the original owners.
COMC has declined a bunch of buyout offers in the past, I've heard. The Beckett refusal back in 2013/14 timeframe is one they're famous for.

There is a new competitor trying to put sportlots out of business, effectively, by trying to recruit their largest sellers to transfer to their new site:
https://www.blowoutforums.com/showth...373268&page=39
Scroll down to the bottom of page, but that thread is a good one to read through if you plan on using it more.

[mrreality68]

interesting never really thought about it.

But I could see the hedgefunds and big money wanting something more established and more able to control the entire process this way to make more money at the various touch points

or they may not feel that sportlots has either limitations or perhaps they tried but they could not agree on a price or perhaps they did not want to sell

[swarmee]

Really, buying sportlots is more like buying Geocities right now. They're ancient; zero value for an investor. Much easier to create from scratch.

[dnilgis]

BTW I have absolutely nothing to do with sportlots

I just see this large network of dealers engaged in the site, warehousing inventory at home/work, with a central nervous system that acts as an aggregator of orders.

I don't know about you all, but I am looking forward to seeing what becomes of their website development.

edit: I have purchased cards on sportlots

[drg7949]

This is a great conversation, and a topic I've been thinking about lately.

My sense is, COMC is the "big dog" in this area, but it's not optimal for buyers (cost) or sellers (lack of control, costs).

And then you've got other players (Sportlots, Cardbarrel, BuySportsCards, of course ebay, etc), but with so many, you've lost efficiency/scale.

Is anyone familiar with BrickLink, the 3rd party LEGO marketplace? To me, that's exactly the model we need - centrally managed technology, master checklist/database, integrated wantlists, and importantly, individual storefronts (ie, inventory managed by sellers). If someone could replicate that, I think they'd have the vast majority of the market, and we'd all be better off.

Darren