Beckett Accelerator Aimed at Helping Sellers Move Singles Easier

Beckett Business Solutions, headed by Burbank Sports Cards owner Rob Veres, has revealed a little more about a new piece of software aimed at enabling sellers to cross-post their entire inventory of singles to eBay and the Beckett Marketplace.

Rich Klein wrote about the project late last year.  It’s been in development for a long time and eBay is heavily involved in the effort to publicize it to dealers.

In a video released last week, Veres showed off the Beckett Accelerator software program which includes data for more than six million trading cards.  Sellers using the program will be able to utilize the Beckett database to almost instantly post cards to one, two or all three of the high traffic selling platforms.  Titles and descriptions of the cards are built into the system and BBS is currently employing 37 people to scan stock images that will be attached to the program.  They expect to have two million cards scanned into the system by sometime this summer.

Will stock images be acceptable to buyers?  It’s one of the questions we asked Veres in a Q&A that’s posted below the video which you should watch first to understand what the product is about.

Beckett Accelerator is scheduled to be released introduced two weeks from Monday in Las Vegas and is sure to attract a lot of attention from card shop owners, online dealers and others curious to know if it will help them sell large quantities of singles more efficiently and to a much wider audience.

Accelerator looks like a great tool for sellers but I know there are others out there that allow you to cross post items to different platforms.  So what’s the biggest strength of this software over any other selling tool?

RV:  The Accelerator software house the entire Beckett database (over 6 million unique items) with its standard nomenclature as well as up to date pricing. All you have to do is put in the quantity of each card and set a percentage of book that you wish to sell the card for.

You can pull up listings by player or set and launch to the Beckett Marketplace or eBay with just a few mouse clicks. There isn’t any software remotely close to it in the industry.

What type of seller is Beckett Business Solutions aimed at?  Big dealer, small dealer, shop owner, weekend warrior?  Can all benefit and will it be cost effective to each?

RV:  BBS is aimed at every type of seller from the weekend warrior to the industry’s largest volume sellers.

Our entry level price of $99 gets sellers into our eco-system with access to Accelerator, their own storefront, access to Beckett pricing as well as the ability to increment and decrement between that store and eBay. It was also feature our new drag and drop image tool that makes loading images a breeze. This is a great entry point for those looking to get into the business affordably.

We’ll have higher packages that will include access to Beckett driven traffic, access to the image library that we hope to be pushing nearly 3 million unique cards by years end as well as very cost-effective eBay insertions.

One of the benefits of COMC is that you don’t have to identify the cards–just send them in and as long as you’re willing to pay the cost of the inventory process–the work is done for you.  How will BBS compete with that simplicity?

RV:  COMC is an entirely different business model and is a fine solution to those in our industry that want to wash their hands of all of the effort and are willing to pay the fees associated with that service.

Our solution empowers sellers to maintain control of their inventory and manage sales across a variety of channels.  The ability to engage Beckett card descriptions, pricing and images for a fraction of the cost per card is a powerful argument in support of the new BBS selling platform.

The beauty of the BBS model is that you can list your whole inventory through BBS to a storefront for as little as $99 a month if you’re driving the traffic or $249 a month if you wish to be a member of the Beckett Marketplace.

Let’s say I’m looking for Jim Thome cards.  The nearest shop is 30 minutes away and only has a few.  How exactly can BBS help me find what I want, get them to me at a reasonable price and how/where can I use the system?

RV:  We currently have 23 store owners that have over 1 million cards on their websites with us that deliver an awesome Jim Thome shopping experience.

As a whole BBS stores have well over 100 million cards with well over 25 million of them at 25 cents per card. Additionally most of our stores offer free shipping thresholds at $50.  This makes our sellers the lowest priced across the web as far as landed pricing per card.

One quick example: Jim and Steve’s Sports Cards carries over 6 million cards on the BBS site and pays a monthly fee of $449 per month for rent (plus final values that equate to about 13%). On a per card basis that’s a small fraction of a cent per card to list there. And as far as listing costs go, an organized seller can sort, identify and load their cards through Accelerator at less than 5 cents per card).

I assume from the video that you’re using stock images.  Seems like that might be an issue with some collectors, especially when we’re talking vintage cards.  What’s the benefit?

RV:  I’ve found that stock photos work exceptionally well for the vast majority of cards that our sellers sell online. But when the customer wants to see the exact card they are receiving, our software allows the seller to be able to override our stock images with their drag and drop tool and the listing will then lose the stock image tagline.

The upgrade to these new front and back images that are huge (300 dpi) will be perfect for the majority of collectors.

For more information on Beckett Business Solutions, contact Rob Veres at [email protected].

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About Rich Mueller

Rich is the editor and founder of Sports Collectors Daily. A broadcaster and writer for more than 30 years and a collector for even longer than that, he's usually typing something somewhere. Type him back at [email protected]