This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hey there, what's up? Welcome to Side Hustle School. I am your host, Chris Guillebeau. We are beginning an all new week here on the show. Got a lot of stuff I'm looking forward to sharing with you.
And today, in fact, we have another enterprising high school student. He's actually a high school junior who is doing something he enjoys, which is following the sport of baseball. But not only that, as you might guess, he's also making money from it. How much money? Well, in a few short months, he's made more than $10,000.
And he's found a pretty creative way to do that. It involves collecting, buying, and reselling autographed baseballs. Now, I know a lot of listeners are interested in reselling, and the idea of purchasing something from someplace, or otherwise requiring it, and then reselling it for a higher price. Well, if you're interested in that model, you might like this story, because the concepts illustrated within are applicable to a lot of different markets. So like I sometimes say, you don't have to be interested in baseball, or whatever the specific topic is that I'm talking about each day on the show.
There's usually some lesson that you can apply in a different way. And in fact, that's the whole goal of Titusville School. And I'll tell you this story of Autograph Arbitrage right after this. [Music]
In an era of video games and internet distraction, the fan base of Major League Baseball has diminished. But there's still a sizable coast-to-coast contention of enthusiasts and rabid followers who stake out their favorite teams, favorite players, and favorite spots in the stadiums, where they long to catch a foul ball.
Most of them go home without nabbing a ball, but Tim Herron gives them a chance to get on base. He's happy to sell them a brand new Major League Ball, and one signed by their favorite player. Tim has only recently finished his junior year in high school, but he's got some serious side hustle savvy. He realized a while back that he could cheaply collect autographs and goods from star prospects in the minor leagues, and then sell them at a premium when that player makes it to the majors. Now, while we're talking about something as all-American as baseball, you should know that Tim's hustle history also includes a lemonade stand, as well as selling trains made out of candy as stocking stuffers at Christmas time.
So when you hear that he's taking high school classes, including principles of business management and microeconomics, you could wonder if he might be teaching them himself. A lifelong baseball fan, Tim had been gathering autographs for more than 10 years, always keeping the balls and other items he obtained for his personal collection. But a couple of years ago, he realized what was an expensive hobby could turn into a side business. He started going to nearby Camden Yards, the practice park of the Baltimore Orioles, as often as possible to build up his collection. Baltimore graphs, his memorabilia hustle, came from this new hobby.
He buys major league issue balls in bulk for around $12 each, gets them signed at games, and then sells them and other baseball items on his eBay page and on Instagram. Because he has a sharp eye for player potentials, besides getting balls signed himself, he also buys the signed balls of top prospects and later rakes in the cash when the players make good in the majors. Now, here's an example of this. He recently bought game used batting gloves and a game used bat of the Yankees' Aaron Judge before Judge became one of baseball's biggest names this year. The gloves that cost him $65 are now worth $700.
And if Judge keeps breaking records with his home run hitting, those prices will go 600 feet out of the park. Tim regards what he does as akin to a player's stock market. In essence, he's betting on a player's potential, and many of those potential's share prices have gone over the fences. In fact, in his first few months of business, he's made $20,000 in sales, and after subtracting his product costs for goods and shipping, he's cleared $10,000 in profit. Tim has been pleasantly surprised that people would buy his wares and even more pleased that he could go to games with his dad, build a business around his favorite sport, get to watch players he'd stake to claim on perform, and expand his collection.
Oh, and also make some really good money. Now, if you want to play in the memorabilia big leagues, Tim advises deep research. He says you should get to know the players while they're in the minors and make sure they play for a big market team like the Yankees or the Red Sox. He suggests buying only in small numbers of goods for prospects at first, and lowering risks by investing in a variety of players rather than putting a lot of money behind any one prospect. 17-year-old Tim is ambitious.
He's working on the next phase of his business, which is signing a player to an exclusive memorabilia deal. This is expensive because even for an unproven prospect, that can cost between $5,000 to $50,000, and it has to be done through the player's agent once a big league team drafts him. With an exclusive deal, players can only do autograph signings with the contract holder. They then do several signings a year with up to 2,000 signings a session. Tim is aware of several companies that have signed exclusives and are doing well.
Obviously, there's a risk that a prospect won't perform well or succumb to injury or experience some other unpredictable factor, but Tim's record on the diamond so far shines like, well, like a diamond. I wouldn't want to bat against him. [Music]
All right, here's a riddle for you. Why did the detective go to the baseball game? Because someone stole second base.
All right, so congratulations to Tim. And for everyone else, there are essentially two different business models here. Tim's first business model is getting players autographs himself and then selling them. That's why he's buying the new balls in bulk, then going to the ballpark and collecting the autographs. This is a pretty high profit business, but it's also labor intensive.
And it doesn't scale very well because Tim can only be in one place at one time. I still think it's pretty cool that he's done well with that, but I'm even more impressed with the second business model, which is basically autograph arbitrage. And that's where he's buying autographs from prospects in the minor leagues and then reselling them when they get to the majors. There's a lot more complexity to that, but it's much easier to scale because he doesn't actually have to be at the ballpark every day. And that whole concept of arbitrage is what reselling is all about essentially.
It is about finding a way to acquire something at one price and then reselling it at a higher price. Sometimes in the same marketplace, often from one marketplace to another. And if you can become a specialist in this for any particular topic, there's a lot of upside to it. Like you can see in this example, he's done $10,000 in profit in just a few months. That may prove to not be sustainable, it may go down, or he may actually get better at it and do more.
Whatever happens, I definitely think there's a lot you can learn from this lesson. And I personally thought it was pretty awesome. If you wanna see the show notes for today's episode, just go to sidehustleschool.com/212. If you have a comment or question for the show, give me a call on the Hustle Hotline 8449 Hustle. Until we meet again, I hope your day is amazing.
I'm Chris Guillebeau "This is Side Hustle School." [Music]
