Phone Call of a Lifetime
 

Earlier this week, I got a phone call from a gentleman saying he had a large collection of baseball vintage sets that he wanted to sell. He was very excited and had been saving these sets for a while. All were "vintage and in mint condition". I asked him to send me pictures of the cards. When I got the pictures, all of the cards were.....

1988 Topps Baseball

He must have had 25 1988 Topps sets in binder pages. He asked what I was willing to pay. I told him the binders and binder pages were probably worth more than the cards. He was not happy and insisted I was wrong. I then pointed out you can buy a NM 1988 Topps baseball set on ebay for $10. He hung up.

Unfortunately he was upset because he was expecting his collection to be worth a lot and was hoping to strike pay dirt in this sellers market for collectors right now.

So he was shocked that his time and/or investments was not what he hoped.

Hopefully he did not buy them from someone without researching and over invested or over hoped

Story of our lives. When people find out I collect cards, they ask me to value their 1997 Donruss. I just laugh and tell them the truth.

My mom still insists my collection from childhood is going to pave the way of my future. Never mind that I am well into that future, and it is mostly gravel roads.

I am willing to go in half with you.....$5.00(for all of his cache of sets). I need another opportunity to find the Bob Sebra Enfuego card. :D
One on the left!

Cheers!!

I recently ran into a guy trying to sell his sealed cases of 1993 Upper Deck for about $6,000.

We all know the value of the junk wax period but I will always remember chasing around the wax and stocking up.. It was a fun time and vintage was still affordable no internet and wonderful card shows and stores..

Last year my realtor told me she found some baseball cards abandoned in one of her houses and she asked me to look at them since she knew I collected and she hoped to find some value in them. She dropped them off at my house and when I arrived I looked through the 10 binders of cards and all were late 1980s to early 1990s cards (Fleer/Donruss/Score/Topps)

I had to tell her that they weren't going to be worth much when I returned them to her...she was seriously disappointed.

I probably get at least two calls or more with the same type of story. It's amazing how many try to convince me they are worth a whole lot of money. Mostly tell people to donate them to a church.

Lee

Yes, many late '80 to early '90s junk card stories.

My story is an old lady who had an old baseball card that she wouldn't sell for less than $20. It was an SF Hess and I paid her $800. She asked where she could find another. I said she couldn't, which is why I paid her $800.

So... did the potential seller ever mention a selling price for those high grade 1988 Topps in binders?

You mean you acted professionally with basic human decency and as an adult?!

I have two neighbors who asked me the values of their junk wax era childhood cards....I didn't laugh at them, patiently looked through their "junk" and then told them the truth, that was a year ago, neither have spoken to me since????

My son's baseball coach had me swing by his house to look at his childhood collection of cards. When I told him "the truth" about the majority of his junk wax collection, I could tell he was not happy. On the bright side, I told him some of the cards in his collection did seem to have some value after looking up their sold prices via ebay....they were his 5 different cards from his 6 years in the minors. He had saved 50-60 copies of each of his cards....single cards from those team sets sell periodically around $3 each. He now understands how an over supply can suppress value in the card market.

I just received a phone call, do you buy NASCAR Cards... Dear Lord Nooooo

I've been on hand when stories like this walk into my LCS from time to time, and it's generally somewhat amusing. The last was not modern cards actually, but a lady who had a lower grade '65 Mantle. It might have still been worth $200 or something, but of course she was convinced it was worth at least ten times that. She stormed off in a cloud of anger after the owner offered her I think $150.

That was hilarious!

Love it

In High School I hung out at a local card shop often enough that I was usually there a couple days a week.

One time a guy - who turned out to be another dealer- dragged in a big box of 78 RC cola cans to ask if they wanted them. They pointed at me and said "we don't but that guy does" Six bucks for maybe half the set :)

Then I had to call mom for a ride home ....Lucky she was tolerant of my collecting.

We didn't get to that point.

88t
 

funny, these story's of late 80s early 90s cards.... just never end

I have more sympathy for the people who held a collection 30 years than I do for the quick-flippers.

(...but I paid $500 THREE MONTHS AGO. Why can't I sell it for ten grand yet?!?!?!?)

When moving a bunch of years ago, we had garbage cans and a dumpster out front on the street being crammed with a crapload of stuff, including an untold number of boxes filled with 80's/90's junk era cards (this was before there were separate recycling carts). Just decided to get rid of them once and for all.

Early on, scavengers started appearing, 'casually' looking through the receptacles as my brothers and I took a break for lunch. When one of them stumbled across the first shoebox of cards, I told my girlfriend, "Watch this. Now they got the cardboard fever and are full of hope that Mantles are awaiting them. Too late to stop now!! Ha ha!!!" And sure enough the guy immediately began furiously digging through that box, and his eyes kept darting side to side, looking around, waiting for someone to tell him the cards were off-limits. He couldn't believe his 'luck,' and carefully placed the combed-through box on the ground at his feet, as if staking a claim and telling the others, "This garbage can here is mine!!" Then the digging started everywhere, and it looked like ants suddenly coming across the delicious carcass of a dead yellow jacket. We enjoyed watching the rummaging intensify, because these people were dressed nicely and had much nicer cars than mine, so they obviously weren't down on their luck, hoping to find a working lamp to save a few bucks. Nope, they were vultures. Box after box they pulled out and dug through, greedily keeping the cardboard alms away from the other buzzards. "Mine!! Mine!! Mine!!" There's nothing better than seeing nothing but a guy's Dockers and the bottom of his Polo shirt as he buries himself deeply into a disgusting garbage can, trying desperately to reach the stuff at the bottom.

In the end, they kept a decent amount of the useless junk cards (I probably took out all of the stars), which was bizarre in its own right. Perhaps they wanted to give the boxes a better look through while enjoying a Manhattan out by their pool? Who knows.

Hope is a dangerous thing, and to this day we refer to that afternoon as an episode of 'CSI: Disappointment.' :D

:mad:This reminds me of my own “old lady” story. Years ago, I had a small antique shop. An old lady brought in a 1910 vintage typewriter and said she couldn’t sell it at her yard sale for $10. I also collected typewriters at the time. Instead of paying her $10, I explained to her why it was unusual and rare. I offered her $200. She decided to keep it.

I think I was on Facebook a week or two ago - Griffey Collectors group. Someone posted a picture of a shiny foil non graded early-mid 90s Pacific card #/10k. He asked for appraised value.

I thought, this has to be a joke. Then I thought of all the recent newbies joining because of the hot market, and I decided to tell him the truth. It's worth $1 and 10k is a very high number for a limited edition. Pacific isn't that sought after compared to Topps or Bowman.

Someone else jumped on an said "some" Pacific cards are highly sought after because of low PSA pop reports. I didn't respond again because isn't that the truth. But how do you explain that to a new collector?

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I've had more than my share of these types of stories. I don't usually do it unless I am at a show or shop and the item is already priced and the dealer should know better, but usually it is just best to pay them their $20-30 and take it off their hands, they leave happy and so are you. The likely end to this story is that she will have that typewriter until the day she passes and the person inheriting their estate will end up getting $5-10 for it.

I have had a lot of people reach out to me to sell and use my expertise [that I offered for free] against me and have it blow up a deal. Greed does funny things to people.

I would be one of the guys digging. Not for greed, but for fun. I bought an '80s binder for $5 at a garage sale recently. Took it home, flipped through it for a few memories. And who knows, there may be a pony in that pile of poop. :-)

This story made my weekend 😀

Great Story and wish we had video to even more enjoy it.

Just need to hope. One of them is now not on this forum and making a post showing what you missed and never took out and they got something Fantastic

:D

About ten years ago I guy I knew kept telling me how he had a file cabinet full of 1950s-1960s cards. I offered to buy them and told him to call me. Years later I get the call that he's moved to Kentucky and has to get rid of all the stuff in storage, including that cabinet, and do I want to come over and buy the cards. Um, no.

I grab a big wad of cash and head over there. He did indeed have a file cabinet full of cards. 80% of them were early 1990s football (mostly Pro Set). The rest were 1970s baseball with every star already picked out, and a tiny stack of beater commons from the late 1950s-early 1960s. And one box of 1970s football. Fortunately, whoever picked over the baseball didn't know football so there were some decent names in there albeit in collector grade. I ended up giving him $100 for the stuff I could use and taking the rest as a favor to get rid of them for him. I tried but could not even give away the junk wax. Apparently, no one needs 5000 count boxes of Pro Set and Pacific commons. Go figure.

This was in Huntington!

I think we have all had a similar type story. People read the news about Black Swamp and Wagners...so their cards must be worth millions too.