For the last eight years, I’ve sold cards online. Day after day, I pull, pack, and ship order after order. Sometimes it’s a single card, and other times it’s a lot of multiple complete sets. Some orders are worth .25 and others are hundreds of dollars. At times, I don’t even think about the cards themselves. The process of getting them shipped is just a “thing to do” for the day.
However, to my customers, these cards can have much more meaning. They spent time determining which cards they wanted to buy next, and then chose me and my inventory to help them build their collection. I appreciate that, and I sometimes write a brief Thank You note on the packing slip.
From time to time, I get a note via email or direct message from a customer letting me know my shipment arrived. Sometimes the feedback they leave on eBay says “Thanks”. Well, last week I experienced something for the first time: I received this postcard in the mail.
Reading this message really brightened my day. It was great hearing that my cards lifted their spirits and brought them joy. In that moment, it gave what I do as a reseller a bit of purpose. I also noticed that they didn’t just say thanks. They also went a step further than just thanking me for the cards themselves. By sharing their appreciation for the effort I took to package the cards with care so they would arrive safely, it felt like it took their “Thank You” to another level.
Finally, the customer let me know the cards I sold them were used to get in person autos at spring training. All cards have a story, and the story of these cards just received a new chapter. That’s pretty cool.
A 50 cent stamp and a few minutes of their time to print out a postcard was all it took for that customer to make my day. That thank you card brought me more joy than the sale itself. It was a great reminder to me to make sure I let people know I appreciate them.
I can’t say that I’m going to send postcards to every seller I do business with, but I am going to commit to saying thank you more often. You never know when it just might what they need to hear that day!