Selling, fees & tax
Card Show Table ROI Calculator
A table at a show costs more than the table. Add travel, a hotel, two days of your time and the inventory you have to bring, and the sales figure needed to break even is higher than most first-time sellers expect. This works it out before you book.
The funnel that decides it
Two numbers dominate and both are lower than people assume. Roughly one passer-by in ten stops at any given table, and fewer than one in five of those buys. A show with two thousand attendees is not two thousand customers; on those rates it is about forty.
What actually moves the outcome
- Priced, visible inventory. Unpriced boxes kill the stop rate — nobody wants to ask.
- A reason to stop. One display case with genuinely good cards pulls people in; a table of unsorted commons does not.
- Buying as well as selling. Experienced dealers make much of their show margin buying from the public, not selling to it. That side is not in this calculation and is often the difference between loss and profit.
- The second day. Sunday footfall is usually well below Saturday, but the table fee has already been paid.
Questions people ask about this
Is a table at a card show worth it?
It depends almost entirely on conversion rather than footfall. At a typical 12% stop rate and 18% buy rate, 400 passers-by a day produce about nine sales — so an average sale of $28 and a 45% margin generates roughly $110 of gross margin a day against a table fee that is often more than that. Sellers who profit usually do so by buying at the show as well as selling.
How much does a card show table cost?
Local weekend shows typically run $75–$300 per table for the event, while the large national conventions run into four figures and sell out far in advance. The fee is rarely the largest line — travel, hotel and the value of two days of your time usually exceed it.
What sells best at a card show?
Clearly priced, well-presented singles in the $5–$50 range, and anything a passer-by can recognise without asking. Unpriced inventory suppresses the stop rate more than any other factor, and bulk boxes rarely justify the table space they occupy.
Where these numbers come from
Rates on this page were last checked against the published price lists on . Grading companies change fees and pause tiers without notice — confirm the total on the submission form before you pay.