Kevin, I had something similar happen to me, however, not quite to the extent. I bought a run of vintage(50s-60s) cards (sight unseen) for several thousand dollars. The condition was hyped by the seller. When I received the cards and went through them, I had the same sick feeling I imagine you experienced. I too did not want to back out as I felt that I had made a commitment, so I was stuck with them.
Over the past 15 years or so, I have bought nearly 2 dozen deals like this and had never had a concern....the difference between these other deals and this one was that I normally buy from people I have had other satisfactory transactions with. I owned the fact that I hoped that this deal would be just like all the others...it was not.
I did exactly what Tom recommended, and that was absolutely nothing for several months. I finally sorted the cards out and began the tedious process of selling them on ebay as singles as I realized that this was my only chance to recoup my original investment. As Tom also mentioned, I studied previous sale prices and listed the cards with reasonable fixed prices in order to maximize my profit. I actually found some hidden gems (ie 64 Flood) embedded in the lot which helped me to increase my revenue. When it was all said and done after listing all of the cards, selling most of them, I not only covered my original cost, my ebay expenses, but made a profit equal to the amount I originally spent. The time I spent listing and selling these cards were my greatest expense, but the profit I cleared covered that time quite easily.
In the end, I added some cards to my collection(not as many as expected), and then earned some money to add more cards to my collection.
As Tom mentioned, take some time before you make any emotional decisions and then carefully look through the lot, you maybe sitting on a goldmine and not even know it. Good luck with this.
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