Rip or Treat | Make Your Own Halloween Hobby Re-Packs

Give the Gift of Cards this Halloween

Halloween gives you an opportunity to do something every collector struggles with — giving away piles of unwanted cards. And your solution will come right to your door and pick them up from you. They’ll even thank you for them. 

Hobby message boards are riddled with questions about what to do with all those common cards you’ve got stacked up. And yes, you can make some money dumping tubs on your local card shop so they can rifle through 30,000 cards and come up with a handful worth more than $6. Or you can be the cool house at Halloween and re-package super-packs of cards for trick-or-treaters. I’ve done it, and you might be surprised how much kids enjoy it.

Ditch the boring candy this year and give away your space-stealing cards. Here’s how you do it:

1. Buy a bunch of “team bags”
2. Fill them with your cards.
3. Print out a “wrapper” for your packs

As with any genius plan (which I can’t claim as my own, I read it on a board many years ago), there are some nuances.

Buying the Supplies

• Make sure you get the regular team bags and not the ones for slabs — unless you really feel like you need to win Halloween. 

Filling the Team Bags

• Consider where you live and who these kids might root for. Always keep in mind these are impressionable youngsters, not card-collecting peers. That 3-cent card of a Guardians reliever or Browns linebacker might be the highlight of Halloween for a 7-year-old Cleveland fan.
• Don’t just throw junk in there. Are you really going to sell that $4 card that’s kind of a hit but not really? Just give it to a kid! You’ll feel all warm and fuzzy!
• Make an effort to include cards in great shape.

Building the Wrapper

• This is totally optional, but it brings your “cool house” quotient way up for the older kids. 
• It’s essentially just a printed out card that’s customized as your “brand.” 
• Typical trading cards are 2.5×3.5 inches, so we’re going to have a slight problem getting these to work inside a 4×6 cheap bulk photo printout at your local drugstore. What I do is opt for the wallet option, so you end up with four 2×3 prints. They’re a little smaller, but it’s a Halloween bag — make a cool design and nobody will care. 
• I am a Photoshop nut, so I will just grab cool images and designs and make something fun. Or I’ll find a cheap designer online. If you DIY, make the “drop shadow,” “outer glow,” and “stroke” functions your best friends in this process.
• Lean into the Halloween aesthetic! Haunted houses, bats, pumpkins, orange and black color schemes, whatever you like.

Why Do It?

• You’ll wake up on Nov. 1 with a feeling like you just decluttered your life.
• Other parents will love you for not giving their kids candy and will nod knowingly at your shared collectordom when you pass them in the grocery store.
• Your house probably will fall under the protection of local teen card collectors. GIVE THE BIG KIDS EXTRA BAGS!

Good luck everyone! May your houses remain unscathed and your neighbors be impressed!

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