Back by Popular Demand: Volume Customer Discounts

By Dean Hanley
Founder and Owner, Deans Cards

Back By Popular Demand are our Volume Discounts for customer orders. You have spoken and we have listened. Stop on by our website to see how low our prices have gone. Here is a summary of how our discounts work.

The Primary Mission Statement of Dean’s Cards, or our purpose for being, is to “make vintage card collecting fast, easy and fun”. Two of the many things we do to enable this is to “offer conservatively graded vintage cards at competitive prices”. Another goal that we have is “to strive to stock at least one of every vintage card online, in each of the popular grades in stock”. 

The Dean’s Cards Surplus Inventory Discount, often referred to simply as “Inventory Discounts”, help us to achieve each of these objectives.

Inventory Discounts  

The idea of the Dean’s Cards Inventory Discounts is simple. Dean’s Cards has over a million cards online. We buy and sell thousands of vintage cards each week. The as the quantity of an “item” (a card, in a particular grade) in the Dean’s Cards Inventory increases, it triggers a higher Inventory Discount and lowers the net price of the item by 10%.


When Dean’s Cards decreases or sells out of a certain item, the Net Price of that item increases. The higher price is then reflected in our Dean’s Cards Bid Software, which allows us to bid more aggressively and replace the items with low quantities. We strive to be your “one stop shop” for vintage cards.

The Inventory Discount applies only to the cards from before 1981. It also applies to all magazines.

  
Volume Discounts on Customer Orders

As the dollar amount or volume of your order increases, so does the percentage of your volume discount. Volume Discounts begin at $50 and top out at 20% when the invoice amount (net total after Inventory Discounts are applied) reach $1000. Volume Discounts are based off the Total Net Price of the items in an Order, before tax or shipping charges.

 Getting Dean’s Best Price

With these two discounts, you can rest assured that you are getting our best prices. You also get the benefit of knowing that we do not give any other discounts, to anyone, on any product - under any circumstance. Dean’s Cards was founded in 2001 and we have never made an exception to this policy.

The reason for this policy is simple: Our customers know that they are getting our best price, so they know that they do not have to contact us to negotiate on every order. This is all part of making buying from Dean’s Cards fast,easy and fun. From our perspective, with the amount of business that we do on a daily basis, we would be overwhelmed by the number of inquiries.

If you have any questions please contact us.

Dean Hanley, founder and owner of DeansCards.com, is considered one of the foremost experts on the subject of vintage baseball cards, other sports and non-sports cards and has a regular column in the Sports Collectors Digest and publishes articles on his blog.

Dean has also written two books on vintage sports cards: The Bubble Gum Card War: The Great Bowman & Topps Sets from 1948 to 1955 and Before There Was Bubble Gum: Our Favorite Pre-World War I Baseball Cards. Both are available in eBook and paperback form.

Fist Full of Stars Back From PSA

We just got back a nice batch of cards from PSA this week.  Mantle, Cobb, Mathewson, Aaron, Mays, Banks, Williams, Gehrig and some more Mantle.  None of the cards were super high grades or anything, just decent mid to low grade star cards from a recent collection we purchased.  The thing that always gets you though, is having 10 Mantles hit you at once.  All from the 50s, both Topps and Bowman.  The highest grade we received on any Mantle was a PSA 6 on a 1956 Topps. 

All Mantles aside, we had a handful of Hank Aarons, a Willie Mays, a Lou Gehrig, Ernie Banks, Christy Mathewson and one beat up Cobb.  The Cobb is a T206 with a Polar Bear back, and it looks like it was "loved" pretty hard over it's 100+ years on this earth, leaving us with it only being Authenticated.  The Gehrig card is pretty cool regardless of getting a PSA 1, simply because we don't see 1933 DeLong cards come through the door too often which makes it the only 1933 DeLong we currently have.

Well, we have a couple batches of cards still out with PSA and are adding higher level singles daily right now.  So keep checking back, you never know what we are going to get in.

Full List of Recent PSA Additions:
Mathewson, Christy - White Cap - T206 - PSA 2 Good (MK)
Cobb, Ty - Bat off Shoulder - T206 - PSA Authentic
# 92 Ted Williams - 1939 Play Ball - PSA 3 VG
# 7 Lou Gehrig - 1933 DeLong - PSA 1 Poor
# 253 Mickey Mantle - 1951 Bowman RK - PSA 2 Good
# 101 Mickey Mantle - 1952 Bowman - PSA 5 EX (MC)
# 101 Mickey Mantle - 1952 Bowman - PSA 3 VG
# 82 Mickey Mantle - 1953 Topps - PSA 2 Good
# 82 Mickey Mantle - 1953 Topps - PSA 3 VG
# 82 Mickey Mantle - 1953 Topps - PSA 4.5 VG-EX+
# 82 Mickey Mantle - 1953 Topps - PSA 5 EX
# 135 (Gray Back) Mickey Mantle - 1956 Topps - PSA 3 VG
# 135 (Gray Back) Mickey Mantle - 1956 Topps - PSA 4 VG-EX
# 135 (Gray Back) Mickey Mantle - 1956 Topps - PSA 6 EX-MT
# 244 Willie Mays - 1953 Topps - PSA 3 VG
# 128 Hank Aaron - 1954 Topps RK (3 of them) - PSA 2.5 Good+
# 94 Ernie Banks RC - 1954 Topps - PSA 4 VG-EX 

Spending The Day at Dean's

Today, Dean'sCards.com received some welcome visitors to our office.  A crew from Fox Sports Ohio and Cincinnati's local Fox affiliate stopped by to learn more about our us and the hobby we love.  Of course, we're more than happy to share a few of the finer items in our inventory and how we make it all come together everyday. 

The upcoming segment will offer a chance to meet Dean and he takes the viewer into our card warehouse for an up close look at some of the finest items we have in our deep inventory of cards.  Dean is very excited to share his love of card collecting with all the Cincinnati Reds fans who will be watching. 

The upcoming segment will air soon on local channel Fox 19 as well as during the pregame of an upcoming Reds Broadcast on Fox Sports Ohio.  We are very grateful for their interest in the hobby and their generosity in creating the piece. Stay tuned to the blog as we will share the upcoming story with as it airs. 

For more information on collecting cards and a deeper look into our inventory, please visit Dean's Cards.com.

Dean Hosts Bronson Arroyo at the Green Diamond Gallery

Last Thursday, Dean got the chance to sponsor another Green Diamond Gallery event, this time featuring Cincinnati Reds starting pitcher Bronson Arroyo. Dean got to introduce Bronson, who has been with the Reds for the past six seasons and won at least nine games each year. Bronson got to talk about his time playing for the Boston Red Sox and winning the 2004 World Series. He also showed the audience how to throw one of his famous curve balls and even got to sing and play guitar. Dean said he thoroughly enjoyed the stories about the current Reds team and pitching staff.

The next day, Bronson started the game against the St. Louis Cardinals, and, although he didn't get the W, the Reds won in extra innings.  Please click here to view our entire selection of Bronson Arroyo baseball cards.  Click here to read about Dean's previous Green Diamond Event experience hosting Dave Parker.

Dean on 700 WLW!

Here is Dean talking about his passion for baseball cards and his new e-Books on Lance McAlister's show on 700WLW last Thursday.

DeansCards.com Releases First eBook: Before there was Bubble Gum: Our Favorite Pre-World War I Baseball Cards

Contact: Elana Winget
e-mail: Elana@DeansCards.com
Phone: 513-898-0651
www.DeansCards.com

DeansCards.com Releases First eBook: Before there was Bubble Gum: Our Favorite Pre-World War I Baseball Cards

CINCINNATI, Ohio (April 20, 2011) – After six months of hard work, Dean Hanley of DeansCards.com, has published his very first eBook, chronicling the history of the Pre World War I baseball cards. With the help of co-author Allyson Hamlin, a Dean’s Cards employee who focuses the majority of her attention on these early cards every day, the duo has published a 50 page informational read on some of baseball’s earliest cards.

While Dean has been considered an “expert” within the vintage card field for several years now because of his numerous published articles, this is Allyson’s first major publication. She began working for Hanley when she was fifteen years old, and though she went away for college, she continued to work for him on her various breaks. She is now 23 years old, and a graduate of Indiana University. When she first went to work for Dean 8 years ago, Allyson simply sorted and sleeved cards, and pulled various orders in Deans basement office space. In recent years, Allyson has grown to love various aspects of the hobby, and has devoted much of her time researching the many Pre-World War I vintage sets out there. Only six short months ago, Allyson and Dean began compiling the book.

“There’s not a lot of information out there. All of the Pre-War players are deceased, as are the original buyers, leaving us with very few primary sources”, says Allyson. With that said, Allyson really had to scour the web and piece together a lot of tid-bits of information when writing this book. “I found a few pictures of packaging, I would zoom in on the picture to see who manufactured the package, and then researched the manufacturer. It was a lot of detective work”.

Initially, Allyson conducted this research in order to write short blog articles on the various Pre-War sets. When Dean saw how much work she had put into her research, he came to the conclusion that it would be wasteful not turn this valuable information into some sort of book that other collectors and baseball enthusiasts would enjoy. “Virtually no one knows about several of the sets discussed in this book. There’s just not much information out here on these early sets” says Hanley.

Before there was Bubble Gum: Our favorite Pre-World War I Baseball Cards discusses a variety of early cards, ranging from tobacco cards, to caramel cards, to cards issued with clothing, and everything in-between. The book is divided into sections, and each section is devoted to focusing on one type of card. The T-Card section for example, gives an overview of the T-Card industry as a whole, and then is further broken down by chapters. Each chapter contains information on one specific set of cards, and features numerous color pictures of the cards being discussed. The T206 chapter for example, discusses the various rare and common card backs found on the American Tobacco Company’s famed white-border cards.

Both Dean and Allyson put a lot of hard work into publishing this eBook, as well as the rest of the Dean’s Cards staff who edited the book and helped with the formatting. To learn more about the eBook, click here.

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Cincinnati’s “Dean of Baseball Cards” Sponsors his Boyhood Hero at Local Museum

Contact: Elana Winget
e-mail: Elana@DeansCards.com
Phone: 513-898-0651
www.DeansCards.com

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Cincinnati’s “Dean of Baseball Cards” Sponsors his Boyhood Hero at Local Museum

CINCINNATI, Ohio (April 13, 2011) – Cincinnati native Dean Hanley, owner of DeansCards.com, is sponsoring guest-speaker Dave Parker at the Green Diamond Gallery in Montgomery on April 14th, 2011. While almost everyone in Cincinnati knows of local native and ex-Red Dave Parker, Dean Hanley and the Green Diamond Gallery are also renown in their selective circles.

The Green Diamond Gallery, a private club located in downtown Montgomery, houses one of the best private collections of baseball memorabilia in the country. The Green Diamond however, is less known because it is not-often open to the public “The Green Diamond is available to host local corporate, charity and private events.”, says Kevin Manley, the Manager of the gallery. “People come to the gallery for an event that usually features a famous guest-speaker and see how great of a place it is. The response to the gallery has been so strong, that there is currently a waiting list to become a Wright Society Member.”

“This event is Pure Cincinnati in every respect”, says Dean Hanley, who is often called the “Dean of Baseball Cards”. Hanley owns and operates DeansCards.com, the worlds #1 seller of vintage sports cards on the web. DeansCards.com, located in Oakley, has an unbelievable online inventory of over one million cards. .The webpage is well-known nationally by vintage cards collectors. “Few people here in town realize that DeansCards.com is here because we sell only on the internet”, says Dean. “But that is starting to change because of all the local sports cards and memorabilia collections that we are buying”.

Hanley, who will often spend tens-of-thousands of dollars in a month buying collections says, “People are starting to realize, that because of the national online presence of DeansCards.com, we can pay more for vintage collections than local sports card shops. Dean’s Cards will buy just about any sports collectible from 1869 to 1969. Some of the old items that we see are incredible.”

Five years ago, Dean was able to purchase Dave Parker’s 1972 Carolina League Batting Trophy for a local collector. Hanley liked the huge plaque so much, that instead of reselling it, he hung it on his office wall. “The problem with me owning a baseball card and memorabilia store, is that I often fall in love with some of the items and decide to keep them for my collection.”, says Hanley. “I grew up watching Dave Parker play and it is a thrill for me to be able to sponsor this event and get to spend a little time with him. Ten of my neighbors and friends will also be there as my guests, and we are excited about the opportunity to talk to Parker and other ex-Reds who may drop by.”

When asked about how he feels about selling baseball cards for a living, being a member of the Green Diamond, and meeting his boyhood heroes.”, Hanley smiles and says, “It doesn’t get any better than this. It is like being a kid again. I am doing exactly what I am supposed to be doing.” May we all be so lucky.

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Man Turns Boyhood Hobby into World’s Largest Baseball Card Store

Contact: Elana Winget
e-mail: Elana@DeansCards.com
Phone: 513-898-0651
www.DeansCards.com

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Man Turns Boyhood Hobby into World’s Largest Baseball Card Store

CINCINNATI, Ohio (April 11, 2011) – May of 2011 will mark Dean Hanley’s 10th year as owner of DeansCards.com. With over one million cards online, DeansCards.com has the largest inventory of sports cards on the web.

As a casualty of down-sizing a decade ago, Dean Hanley decided to take the opportunity to start his own web-based business – DeansCards.com. Hanley’s choice of the type of business drew some strange reactions. “When I told people that I was going to sell baseball cards for a living, they would either stare in disbelief or break out in laughter”, Hanley explained.

Unlike traditional sports cards stores, DeansCards.com counts on the internet for 100% of its sales. To keep expenses low, Hanley started DeansCards.com out of his basement. Since he is a card collector, Hanley used himself as model for the type of customer that he wanted to attract. “My goal was to create a store where I would love to shop, that also had the best selection of cards available anywhere”, Hanley explained. “We do not have a physical store for people to visit, so our website has to be fast, easy, safe and fun. “

Sports cards collectors have certainly responded. DeansCards.com now averages over 1000 unique visitors a day to its online store and the company’s revenues have grown an average of 35% annually. DeansCards.com has grown to have over one million vintage sports cards posted online, eight full-time employees and occupies a 3,000 sq ft office in Oakley.

The one piece of advice that Hanley gives to fellow entrepreneurs is “try to become the foremost expert on the products that you sell”, and he has certainly taken his own advice. Dean writes a popular blog about vintage card sets, has a regular columns in Sports Collectors Digest, and was recently featured on a series of “How To” videos on collecting sports cards – produced by MonkeySee.com. Dean is also releasing two books on vintage cards and has been chosen to appear as a subject matter expert on a new documentary-type game show series - scheduled to air later this year.

“Looking back, I guess the decision to sell baseball cards was a big risk”, said Hanley. “I was not sure if I could make a living out of my boyhood hobby, but I knew that I would have a lot of fun trying, so I totally threw myself into building the best internet store possible. It has been a great ten years, and it will fun to see what the next decade will bring.”

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Dean on the Fox19 Morning News!

Dean was recently featured on our local news program FOX 19 Morning XTRA and he got to talk about a few of his favorite cards, including the 1963 Topps Pete Rose Rookie, 1933 Goudey Babe Ruth, and a T204 Ramly Roy Hoblitzell, among others. Dean had a great time talking about his passion and hopes he can do it again soon.

Card collector turns hobby into business

This is a copy of the Article published at Cincinnati.com

Dean Hanley, seen here holding three
Babe Ruth baseball cards, has built
DeansCards.com into one of the largest online
sellers of sports cards and memorabilia.
 / The Enquirer/Joseph Fuqua II

Dean Hanley remembers the summer days of youth, trading baseball cards with his buddies and chewing Topps bubblegum till his teeth hurt.

In the spokes of his bike, he'd stick the early 1970s colored cards with stats and signatures of baseball greats like Pete Rose, Frank Robinson and Johnny Bench.

"The cards would make our bikes sound like motorcycles. We didn't know they'd be worth something 40 years later," he says.

Today, Hanley knows exactly what they're worth. Over a decade, he's built DeansCards.com into one of the largest online sellers of sports cards and memorabilia. His seven-person Oakley shop annually trades hundreds of thousands of cards, new and old, online.

Hanley is especially known among card collectors and dealers nationwide as an expert on vintage cards from the 1950s and '60s. He writes a regular column for Sports Collectors Digest, blogs at blog.deanscards.com, produces YouTube videos on rare cards and will soon publish two historical e-books on card collecting in the late 1800s and early 1950s. In May, he'll travel to Los Angeles to film a pilot for a new reality show called "It's Worth What?". He calls the show a mix of Antiques Roadshow and the Price is Right, where he'll be the expert card appraiser.

"The secret to my success has always been that I'm first and foremost a collector," he says. "If I think it's cool, I want to sell it."

Hanley has been fascinated with baseball cards for most of his life. In business school at the University of Southern California, he wrote a thesis about card collecting. One of the foremost dealers at the time even offered him a job, but Hanley chose to move back East and enter the burgeoning software industry instead. He spent nearly 15 years in sales and product development roles for information technology companies, which gave him the technical and marketing skills he uses today.

Hanley's adult interest in cards picked back up again in the late 1990s when his son (now 14) was young. He attended some vintage card shows and began searching for dealers online, but quickly became frustrated with few options.

In 2001, Hanley lost his job in product management at a large software firm.

"I decided to take the opportunity to pursue my hobby," he says. That year, Hanley built an e-commerce site populated with 20,000 cards from his father's collection and began marketing DeansCards.com at shows and through online advertising. His first employee was the family's babysitter, Allyson Hamlin, who spent time sorting cards, grading their quality and shipping orders. She still works at Dean's Cards today, managing the inventory of vintage cards and bidding on incoming collections. She co-wrote the first e-book.

Within a few years, several teenagers had taken over the Hanley basement, forcing the operation to move to office space in Mariemont. Four years ago, Dean's Cards expanded into the 3,000-square-foot office in Oakley.

Hanley says sales have grown an average of 35 percent a year, with one flat year during the recession in 2009. He buys about 500 collections of cards annually and processes about 1,000 orders a month. An average order tops $100. But his largest sale happened last year, when a collector spent $71,000 on the full 1952 Topps set of 407 cards. One Mickey Mantle card was worth $31,000 of that sum.

"Vintage cards were from the golden age in baseball, and they weren't produced in mass quantities like today," says Tom Bartsch, editor of Sports Collectors Digest in Wisconsin. "That's where the money is."

And that market won't go away any time soon as about 5,000 men turn 65 each day. Back in the early 1960s, when they were young, 89 percent of all pre-teen boys collected cards.

In the Oakley office, Hanley is grooming the next generation of young collectors. His full-time staff of five is aged between 21 and 28, "computer experts," he says. His wife, Valarie, keeps the books.

Working together helps build camaraderie, Hanley says. That means everyone at the office chips in with the not-so-fun jobs. Each morning is spent pulling orders made the day before. They all scan inbound cards worth more than $300 to list for sale on the web site.

Hanley likes to joke, "They always seem to sell a little better online."

Updating that site is a constant priority for Hanley; more than 1 million cards are up today.

"Collectors want the cards accurate, and they want them fast and easy to buy," he says.

But maintaining his role as an industry expert is important, too. He's especially interested in the role of cards in baseball history, starting from when cards were packaged with tobacco in the late 1800s. Prior to television, those cards often provided baseball fans their only visual of their favorite players.

Hanley's upcoming e-books are titled "Before there was Bubble Gum: Our Favorite Pre-World War I Cards" and "The Baseball Card "Gum Wars" and the Great Topps Sets of the early 1950s." The first is for sale at Amazon.com. The second will be available by June.

"It's Worth What?", hosted by Cedric the Entertainer, airs on NBC this summer.

Dean Hosts Dave Parker at Green Diamond Event

Last Thursday, Dean had the honor of hosting former Cincinnati Reds OF Dave Parker at the Green Diamond Gallery's most recent social event. Dean was happy to introduce one of his favorite former players and talked at length about his two pieces of Dave Parker memorabilia. The first is a bat used by Parker in his 1973 season with the Salem Pirates, during which he won the Carolina League Batting Champion. Dean also talked about hanging his Dave Parker growth chart, which went all the way to Parker's height of 6'6", in his college apartment.

We have included pictures from the event that show both Dean and Dave speaking at the event, as well as Dean, Dave, and Dean's son Jonathan.

More Collectors Come to Dean's

When collectors contact Dean’s Cards about selling their sets, the e-mails go directly to Dean.  But what most people don't realize is that someone else usually goes through all the cards to determine the value of the collection.

Dean's Cards goal is to have one million cards posted online by the end of the year.  In order to accomplish this goal, we aggressively buy vintage sports cards: nearly 1000 collections a year.  No one pays more and no one is more trustworthy.  The word on how much Dean's Cards pays for collections is getting out!

Evaluating A Collection

At Dean’s Cards, we pride ourselves on both our accuracy and our speediness when bidding on collections.  Our goal is to submit an offer to the seller within two business days after the package arrives at the office.

Please click here for more information about what we buy or to watch Dean’s video on selling your sports card collection.

Dean's Cards Featured in the Business Courier

A business he loves is in the cards

Imagine surrounding yourself with baseball cards all day. Tons of cards. Hundreds upon thousands.

That’s the life of Dean Hanley.

Dean Hanley has more than 850,000
baseball cards available through his online store.

He left his job in 2000 after 10 years in the software industry. Tech firms were cutting like crazy, and he had to find something else.

A collector since childhood, Hanley was searching online for cards to fill out a season’s set. Not finding many, he started Dean’s Cards – just him and his dog in his basement.

His company, which now has seven employees, has moved twice and operates out of a 3,000-square-foot space in Oakley. But it isn’t a typical baseball card shop.

There’s no walk-in retail business. The office, in a light industrial area, has no real card displays, just a few cards on the walls.

But behind the facade is a treasure trove. Hanley has more than 850,000 cards indexed and for sale at www.DeansCards.com.

Being a tech guy, using a Web site to sell was a natural. Hanley figures he has the largest vintage-card inventory online. “The Internet is the great middleman,” he said.

Taking an actual middleman out of the equation and avoiding the costs of a retail shop allow him to save money so he can buy and sell at better prices than others can.

Starting a business is a daunting task

“You have to have a product that’s better, faster or cheaper than the next guy,” Hanley said. “I knew marketing, and I knew baseball cards.”

At first, friends were skeptical.

“I was the laughingstock of our little village,” the Mariemont resident said. “People would say, ‘He’s selling baseball cards, for God’s sake.’”

It didn’t seem like much at first for a guy with an MBA. His wife, who also has an MBA, gave him two years to be able to support the family. They had small children, and she planned to stay home after that.

Hanley made it by first taking a modest income out of the business. Sales have surged 40 percent a year until this year.

Revenue is down about 25 percent this year, but he’s not disheartened. “Hopefully, this is a little bump in the road,” he said.

Industry insiders: probably is just a bump

Baseball card collecting has slowed overall. But the vintage part of the market – mainly pre-1980s cards – in which Hanley does most of his business is holding up, said T.S. O’Connell, editor of Iola, Wis.-based trade publication Sports Collectors Digest.

“The vintage end appears to have withstood a slowdown in the economy,” O’Connell said. “The last 18 months, we haven’t noticed the huge softness you would have expected.”

Hanley focuses on the customer, who mainly wants orders shipped correctly and quickly. He ships them out the same day the orders come in, tens of thousands of cards a month.

The cards in his shop are almost unfathomable. The oldest is an 1887 tobacco card, which is how baseball cards were delivered back then. The most valuable is a 1909 Ty Cobb card worth $5,000. He has 1933 Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig cards.

Then there are the other memorabilia. Cards make up about 85 percent of sales. But Hanley also has every issue, ever, of Sports Illustrated. He has a batch of old issues of The Sporting News. Stacks of “Who’s Who in Baseball” guides. He has media guides, yearbooks and old sports magazines.

Source: http://cincinnati.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/stories/2009/11/09/story22.html