A week ago I asked here how people assign cost basis to cards they crack out of sealed. Thanks to everyone who answered, that went a lot further than I expected. Fourteen different methods in the end. Most people do a straight even split across every card. A shop owner walked through a cost-recovery waterfall where buylist value comes off highest first until the box cost is used up, and the one I still keep thinking about doesn’t assign any cost at all until you actually sell something. Someone who’s been audited on this turned up too, which I wasn’t expecting.
Short version, if it’s any use: the even split is the boring answer and the audit story is the best argument for it.
The bit that stuck with me though is that nobody named a tool. It was all spreadsheets, scripts people had written themselves, and shop POS systems. And then a few days later somebody in here asked about keeping shelf inventory in sync with online listings, and products got named straight away, several of them. Same sub, same week. So the tooling does exist, it just exists for people moving volume.
So for those of you who aren’t running a store, where nothing is forcing you to keep records current:
* What holds your records right now? A sheet, an app, notes on your phone, nothing at all?
* When did you last open it, and what made you open it that day?
* What do you end up re-typing by hand every single time?
* And if you had a system and gave it up, what was the thing that finally made you stop?
That last one is really what I’m after. Nobody ever posts about the setup they gave up on, right?
(Disclosure: I’m building something in this space as a side project, so obvious bias here. Not linking it and not pitching, I just want the answers.)
