Burbank Sportscards

For owner Rob Veres, the fun thing about the business is the passion of their customers, such as sports-loving kids. “Kids across the country love to play sports. They want to emulate their favorite athletes and they also want to feel a connection by collecting trading cards as well.” And, many of those kids eventually grow up to become serious collectors or investors willing to spend thousands of dollars for the right card.

Burbank Sportscards is a family-owned business that started in the late ‘80s.

In those days, customers looking to buy cards had to come to the store and physically dig through boxes and peruse showcases to find what they were looking for. In 1995 they expanded to a second location, doubling their real estate footprint, before adding their third location in 2021. Today, they are now the world’s largest card emporium, offering more cards of all types than any of their competitors.

However, Burbank quickly realized the value proposition of online sales on sites like eBay and today conducts a full 80% of their business online. Now, instead of serving the walk-in trade or a limited number of remote customers by mail, they were able to buy and sell cards to customers anywhere on the globe in locations as disparate as Australia to Finland.

However, according to Veres, going online introduced a new challenge: how to create high-quality card images in order to offer them for sale.

In order to create attractive card images that potential online customers can view on eBay or Burbank’s website, they had to lay the card down on a flatbed scanner, scan it, then flip the card over, scan it again, then crop or adjust the image.

This was a huge time sink, considering the millions of cards they buy and sell every year. “The biggest pain point selling online is images, period. For years, scanning cards was a nightmare.” And as their volume increased, the problem only got worse.

Veres recounts that “New technology that I discovered from fi Series document scanners changed that.”

When he upgraded to their first fi Series document scanner, his staff was able to process a complete 1981 top set of 726 cards in only 14 minutes! Using their previous scanning platform, “it would have taken hours, if not all day, to scan.” 

And the quality? According to Veres, “It’s better than industry standard.” Which is crucial for online sales, since the card image has to be crisp and vivid in order to make the sale.

Another quality issue to consider is the card scanning process. 

While many card holders collect cards as part of their passion for the sport, there are also collectors who are interested in cards as an investment.

As a result, over time some cards may become extremely valuable, if not today, then a decade from now. Recently, a Mickey Mantle card made the news after selling for $12.6 million.

Burbank couldn’t risk cards being damaged by scanners that jam or wrinkle or fold them, because that could cost them a small fortune in lost value. Card images can’t be blurry or out-of-focus and the imaging software has to eliminate spots, glare or other defects which would make the cards less attractive, and less valuable, to discerning, on-line viewers.

The combination of the high-speed fi Series scanners and Burbank’s Kronocard 2 card management system from Kronozio, allows them to scan over a million individual cards per year, post them for sale on the web and realize a profit with just a few seconds of effort per card.

So, whether you’re passionate about a single player or team, or are a sports card flipper, investor or general collector, Burbank Sportscards can provide you exactly what you need, when you need it and where you need it, thanks, in part to the state-of-the-art scanning platforms they are utilizing.