An Entrepreneurial Mindset

Ever since I was born I was drawn to the idea of capitalizing on my given set of resources.

As early as kindergarten I learned how to use my father's photo copier. I began photocopying cartoon color-in pages and sold them for 50 cents. I didn't know what fascinated me about money, but I sure knew that I loved to collect it.

Pokemon was the most popular game of my childhood. I remember playing countless hours on my Gameboy. Everyone wanted to be the best at the game. Some went as far to pay others to train their Pokemon for them. I looked at this as an opportunity to make money. I began saving my lunch money to purchase a GameShark. A GameShark is a device that lets you cheat in any Gameboy game, including Pokemon. It costed me $25, but it quickly paid itself off. I used the GameShark to generate the most powerful Pokemon and sold it the other players for a fraction of the asking price to train someone's Pokemon for them.

As I got older, my fascination shifted from Pokemon to the card game Yu-Gi-Oh. Looking back, the way I treated Yu-Gi-Oh was unethical, however, I feel that it was an excellent example of obtaining a profit utilizing available resources. Yu-Gi-Oh cards varied in rarity, and the best ones could cost several hundreds of dollars. The rare cards are finished with a metallic glow, and I learned of a rumor that the holographic finish would add a very slight weight to the card. I bought a scientific scale that could measure grams and tested this theory out. Yu-Gi-Oh cards were sold in packs at the stores, and they would usually cost $4 each. You could also buy a 24-pack box set for $60. I'd buy a 24-pack and scale each individual pack, and I would only open the packs that weighed more. This guaranteed me to get a rare card each time. I would sell the remaining packs for $2 each, and they sold easily. I became a vendor of sorts. I carried a large folder of Yu-Gi-Oh cards to school and sold rare cards while also selling packs of cards. I quickly learned what the going rate of each card was, and I began buying them from others too.

I will continue writing this tomorrow