Sports Card Investor "The Virtual"

[webottew]

Back in May, Sports Card Investor announced a virtual version/replacement of the National Convention, (aka The Virtual) held this weekend.

Here is my quick overview from "attending" the Virtual the past 2 nights (Fri and Sat)

Overview:
SCI hosted a live YouTube stream each night from approx 8PM - 10PM EST. The daily content generally consisted of:

• 3 Dealers showing some of their cards for sale, and then directing attendees to their eBay store to make purchases
• 2 Guests (including an eBay rep, Dr Beckett, Tim Getsch from COMC)
• One group breaker that would bust a free Break for randomly picked entrants

The weekend schedule is here.

PROS

• It was free to attend
• Decent list of special guests. But not really an intimidate interview, and no interaction with the live chat for questions. More like a Paid Advertisement.
• Free entry for chance to join the Break at the end of the evening. They pulled a gold Zion on Saturday night!! Linked here for the Zion pull
• Both eBay and COMC made announcements, but they were not necessarily Breaking News. eBay announced bumping the Free Insertion Fees from 50 to 200 per month. COMC announced upcoming opportunity for investment --details to be announced "soon"

CONS

• The interviews with the special guests were a little canned, and not intimate. No interaction with the Live stream chat.
• The Virtual was a single stream, so there was very little interaction or freedom to "browse the floor" yourself.
• Because it was a single stream, the Chat was often a hot mess. The Mods did a better job as each day passed.
• There was some disorganization for people that stumbled into The Virtual. There were a lot of confused questions asking how to enter into the Free Break and Contests, etc
• Just like the real National, the dealers primarily dealt with Basketball, Baseball and Football. I didn't see any Hockey of note during the stream. Not a wide range of dealers available.

Overall, I think SCI missed the boat. I much more enjoyed the experience of the Virtual Expo with the freedom to go around to dealers of my choice, and check out the main stage for guests that were of interest. I get it that this is all new in our COVID world, but I think SCI could have used the good and bad learned from the Virtual Expo to their advantage. After all, the Virtual Expo was rushed quickly to existence. The Virtual has had since May to prepare for this weekend.

Did anyone attend? What were your thoughts?

For those that do not want to watch the Leaf game tonight, there is one last night of The Virtual here.

 

[JGhostHockey]

I watched most of the 1st 3 days but totally forgot on Sunday. I enjoyed it with the exception of the lack of hockey. The only thing that I get out of it is that there will always be the investment side of it but if the rest of the sports get like basketball it's going to just become a rich man's game. Just think of how we feel now if you even can bust The Cup but had to pay $5k for it got nothing, Watch a few and it was painful knowing how much was paid.

 

[terry1hockeyfan]

I checked it out a bit. I watched Sunday night live and one of the previous days after the fact. There was some crazy vintage football and modern basketball shown. I pretty much agree with everything webottew said. I enjoyed the virtual expo much more since there was more opportunity to see what was available, interact and actually buy some cards without having to go to eBay stores or websites. I need my hockey fix and this didn't do much for me. Someone needs to take notes from Jeremy and Ameet's dropbox type format and run with it. I actually sold about 30 cards on facebook tonight. All you need is good pics/scans, reasonable prices and good communication and people will buy.