It’s a hobby he took up while living in Japan. He spent six years living there while running Tokyo’s largest card shop, The Ball Park. Now, he makes regular trips to the Far East from his Ft. Lauderdale, FL home to uncover cards and memorabilia.
It’s great to have the opportunity to talk with Robert.
It begs the question, are his customers here in the States or halfway around the world?
“I have some customers in Japan, but mainly Americans,” explained Kleven, while conducting business at his booth not far from the front entrance. “There is a lot of interest in Sadaharu Oh cards, the Japanese home run king, items from when Babe Ruth toured Japan and the current list of Japanese MLB players.”
Shohei Ohtani’s success in the States has been a boon for Klevens and his business, which features primarily cards from various sports that were released in Japan.
Klevens noted that Americans have long been fascinated with Japanese culture and Japanese sports fans love baseball and follow MLB players. It’s a crossover.
“A lot of Americans also visit Japan and attend games there,” said Klevens.
ScoutingReport allows the user to manage their collection across multiple devices, using common sporting terms:
Roster – this is the users entered collection. Through the built in on-demand synchronizing functionality, your collection is backed up to the cloud and can be leveraged across multiple devices.
Lineups – just like a coach or manager, Lineups provide the ability to partition and segment your collection into teams, sport, rookie, memorabilia, graded and authenticated, etc. Creating lineups is limited to your imagination.
Collector’sArena
The ScoutingReport app also offers a “Collector’sArena”, a proprietary peer-to-peer trading/selling, marketplace. Collector’sArena is a 24/7 Card Show with available tables growing with each new member to the community.
Collector’sArena is simple to use:
Name your price when you list your cards.
No auction to monitor and worry about last second buy out.
Transaction fees are based on our in-app ticketing system. Tickets are less than $0.01 per card. For the remainder of 2020, ticketing fees have been waived.
All transactions require PayPal for peer-to-peer selling via ‘goods and services’ transactions ensures the transactions, eSportsCards is not a middleman like other buying/selling platforms.
Packaging options predetermined by the seller and chosen by the buyer.
How to get started:
ScoutingReport is currently listed for $4.99 in the app stores. Here’s the functionality that is included with the $4.99 download:
Create a User profile – without the profile user interaction is limited to viewing items in the Collector’sArena, i.e. Window Shopping.
Create, organize, store and backup your collection.
Access to buy/sell in the Collector’sArena.
Initial 100 tickets.
Two recent updates to the ScoutingReport app:
Child Accounts:
We have implemented a few securities that are offered in the form of ‘Child Accounts’. A Child Account will enable you to set your child up with their own account; however, there are limitations available to that account that you select: how much can they spend on a transaction without authorization from you; they cannot see any materials (think Billy Ripkens’ bat) that are flagged as ‘Adult Only’ when cards are uploaded to the Collector’s Arena marketplace.
Nomenclature:
Users are not required to utilize existing nomenclature for their card collection. A user can use their own verbiage for card set, card brand or sub set; i.e. green refractor Tom Brady.
Special Deal:
We are hobbyists looking to bring the hobby community back to a central location via the ScoutingReport App and the Collector’sArena. Through the remainder of 2020, we have suspended the ticketing system, only fees are for the PayPal transaction.
Contact Information
Feel free to contact us via email at scoutingreport@escards.com.
Gary Vaynerchuk is no stranger to technology as he has invested in numerous tech startups. Well, he’s also an investor in baseball and sports cards.
Serial entrepreneur, social influencer and CEO of VaynerMedia, Gary Vaynerchuk, never had the chance to attend “The National” when he was a young card collector and “investor.”
So to say he was “giddy” at a Wednesday afternoon panel discussion to open the 40th edition of the “Super Bowl of Sports Collectibles’ was an understatement. The pre VIP Party special appearance also featured Josh Luber, co-founder of StockX, an online marketplace that is creditied with beginning the wheeling and dealing of collectible sneakers in our culture.
Vaynerchuk and Luber were in fact, childhood baseball card collecting friends that met in a New Jersey diner having lunch and talking card collecting and investing.
“I’m incredibly humbled to be here,” admitted Vaynerchuk in his opening remarks. “I’m an immigrant from the (former) Soviet Union and grew up in New Jersey among the lemonade stands and having sports cards.”
Vaynerchuk, worth an estimated $50 billion was an early investor in many tech companies, including Twitter, Tumblr, Uber and Snap.
In this clip, Vaynerchuk explains why sports cards and sports collectibles are so hot again. Also what does the future hold for sports collecting? Very interesting opinions and theories.
