Welcome. I’m Josh, and this is JPM Cards.

No character here, no persona. If you’ve read JPM Picks, you know Pick ‘Em Paul does the talking over there. Over here it’s just me.

Let me back up to how this started.

I’m an 80s-90s baby, so I collected cards the way a lot of us did between roughly ‘86 and ‘92: football, baseball, basketball, whatever I could buy at KB Toys in the Port Plaza Mall. (If you’re local, do you miss those days as much as I do?) Then life happened, the way it does, and the shoeboxes went into a closet for about three decades (or I was ripped off and they were stolen from me in a rigged card game). I don’t really remember.

I got back in because of one trip. I drove to the National Card Show in Rosemont, IL, hoping to meet Gary Vaynerchuk. He’s one of my favorite creators online (not that he needs my money, but he gives away a genuinely absurd amount of free content and helps a lot of people along the way), and he also happens to be behind Vee Friends. I wanted in on that, partly as a collector and partly just to support someone I respect. My son and I both got to meet Gary Vaynerchuk, so it was mission accomplished. But, I also left with far more cards and trinkets then I had planned.

That’s really the pattern this whole hobby has followed for me since. I go in for one thing and leave with three new directions. Vee Friends led to nostalgia sets, nostalgia sets led to soccer figures with my son, and somewhere in there I also decided I’m going to collect Iowa Hawkeyes across every pro sport their players end up in. That one’s less impulse buy, more “of course I’m doing this.” I’ll get into the specifics of that first show, and the local one that followed it, in a separate post soon, because there’s genuinely too much to cram in here.

What JPM Cards is

1) A hobby I’m trying to get to pay for itself

I’m not chasing a five or six figure grail here. The goal is simple: if JPM Cards can cover the cost of the hobby, buying, collecting, all of it, that’s the win

2) Two lanes, one collector

Collector’s Corner is the personal side: pulls, buys, what I’m chasing, what’s staying in my personal collection versus what’s not.

Card Market is the business side: what I’m listing, what sold, what I’m learning about eBay, pricing, and eventually building this into something real.

Read one, read both, whatever fits what you’re here for.

3) Process over hype

You won’t see “guaranteed hit” or “this card is going to skyrocket” language from me. If a listing does well, I’ll tell you. If I overpay for something or a sale falls through, I’ll tell you that too. And I’ve overpaid for a few cards to restart my collection, for sure.

What JPM Cards isn’t

• Not a get-rich scheme. I’m not sure what my holy grail card even is yet.(I actually think it’s a Vee Friends #1 comicbook. I wanted one of those and I really missed out.)

• Not a paywalled newsletter.

What to expect

I’m not going to promise you a schedule I can’t keep. Between a full-time job, a part-time role, writing for JPM Picks, and a book project, I’d rather post when I actually have something worth saying than force out content on a calendar. So: irregular, but honest.

The money part

JPM Cards is free. It always will be. No subscription tier, no paywall.

Where to start

There’s no shop live yet, as I figure this out I don’t even have my first card listed on eBay yet. You’re getting in at the actual beginning. If you want the full story behind how I got here, the play-by-play of the National and the local show that followed it, that’s a separate post. If you’d rather just wait until there’s something to browse, I get that too. Either way, I’ll keep writing.

Last thing

If you’re a collector, a reseller, or just someone who likes reading people figure things out in public, stick around. If you also read JPM Picks, you already know how I write: honest about the process, not interested in pretending I have it all figured out.

Welcome to JPM Cards.

— Josh