"Why are you selling?"
 

Funny, a bunch of people on the board know my eBay handle, and when I list something they not infrequently send me an email asking if there is any reason I am selling and hopefully nothing wrong and not a forced sale, etc. Nice sentiment, and I appreciate the notes.

Since I started collecting, I've never had any hesitation selling stuff I have. In my entire collection there are probably 10-15 items that I have no plans to ever sell, let's call them the "super special" stuff, usually one of a kind items. But everything else is fair game. I periodically go through the safe deposit box and find a few items that I haven't thought of in years and decide to give them a new home. Most of them have gone up in value.

I guess I always assumed this is what 95% of the people on the board do. Buy occasionally, sell occasionally, refine the collection, branch out, move things on that no longer resonate loudly. Am I mistaken? Are there a lof of collectors who buy and never plan on sellng any of their stuff? I'm not quite knocking on heaven's door at this point (I hope), but I have little interest in in leaving my heirs 100s or 1000s of things the need to deal with. To me that seems like it could be a burden.

Can you look, and see if you have any Vern/Verne Clemons cards stuffed away. I'd love to purchase them no questions asked to why you're unloading them.

I'm completely with you. There are only a handful of items I likely will never sell. What's weird is the lack of sentimental value I have when I move a card I like.

A few years ago when I bought my first house, I sold some of my nicer cards to help with the expenses. I thought I'd look back and regret selling them but it never hit me. I think the big reason for it is that most cards are readily available on eBay, BST here, etc. So any time I sell a card, I know I can find another one fairly easily (usually easy anyways) and the only real concern is if prices rise substantially.

Ha. Can I humiliate myself and say I have never heard of him.

You and thousands of other members.
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I have heard of Clarence Clemons. And wouldn't surprise me if Spaeth has his rookie card in a PSA 9.

What he was a singer or actor with a "rookie" card?

There was a time I would have never sold anything but with the passing of my mother I reevaluated things in my life. I’ve sold several things in my collection but nothing in my main focus. It really wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be.
I have heard of Verne Clemons because he played minor league ball in Wichita. I have a postcard of the Wichita team with him in it. It’s not for sale though.

He had a car wreck a day before his NFL tryout

I am in the 5%. I have never sold any part of my baseball card collection. Football, basketball and hockey cards amassed through buying collections have been sold off. I did not give the non-baseball cards a second thought and the money generated fueled baseball purchases. I have started thinking about paring down the collection, focusing on certain cards and in the coming months will hopefully have some items on the BST board.

As i grow older, (like most folks on here are in there 45+ yrs)
and going to the doctors regulary the past 2yrs - it has become more & more on my thoughts about stopping and sell everything and focus more on health/excercise.
I too, has a few cards that i think i never sell (51/52 Mick, leaf paige, BigHead Ruth).

I don't want to say I will never sell, because my collecting journey is really still in it's infancy. I don't have children yet, but hopefully one day when I do, I can pass down some of my cards to them, assuming they are interested.

I have some smaller modern pieces in my collection, that I plan on parting with soon, in order to fund eventual vintage purchases. I do want to say that the core of my collection, will never be sold, at least in my lifetime, barring any life changing events. There are certain cards I have fond memories and sentimental attachments too.

Im going to ramble for a second so pardon me for that.

Ultimately, I am a "set collector" and I never accumulate cards that dont fall into 1 of those sets. At one time I had a HOF set (modest, but relatively complete) that I had to sell (marry well, ladies and gentlemen, marry well). I have a player set of cards from a 50s player that is related to my wife. That wont be sold off anytime soon. And I have an additional "set" that Ive been working on for 20+ years. Ive sold off lower grade duplicates, but thats it. In all of those cases, it makes no sense for me to sell unless Im liquidating the set, which I generally hope to never do.

I might dip my toes back into the HOF one day soon, but Im not sure if I'll attempt a complete set or not and that really messes with my head in trying to visualize what my collection would look like. In short, what prevents me from selling also prevents me from buying!

I’m a pure collector. I’ve never purchased a card intending to ever sell it. However, I will sell a card if I eventually upgrade it to help offset the upgrade cost. Although I enjoy all my cards, I’d have no problem ever selling them if I needed funds - absent the ones from my father’s collection. I’ll die with them.

I have no children and there will come a time when I will sell my sets, not there yet. But I figure 15 - 20 years from now, is a good possibility for me to liquidate things. As long as I am still on top of the soil. Upside for me, my wife know the value of these cards and understands how to get it out of them too.

Cheers,

Butch

As I have of many other players. How about Bill Doak aka Spittin' Bill? That's who Verne usually caught balls from.

How many are you sitting on Leon. LOL.

You don't want the Clemons postcard hanging in his home town city hall? Well then. Seriously if you ever sell hit me up. I'm donating everything to the town when I find it. Just waiting for them to build cases to house items in. There's actually some cool history for a town this size. I won't bore people with.

I used to be someone who said they would never sell anything in my collection but about 2 years after returning to the hobby I realized that I had bought things due to FOMO or a bit of hype around certain sets. Due to this I went through my collection and sold off things that didnt fit what I really wanted to collect. More recently ive been doing more trading of cards that dont really fit the collection and ive been trying to trade up in to better cards that do fit the collection.

In contrast to this my main pc stuff is never gonna be sold or traded unless I find upgrades or better examples along the way.

Collecting is always an individual pursuit, so I suspect our answers will be all over the board depending on our motivations and goals.

Personally, for the most part I’m a player collector. Typically the only reason why I sell is because I’ve upgraded.

The other exception being sometimes to get a piece that I want for a player that I collect, I have to pick up a larger lot. Sometimes that larger lot leads to me collecting a new set. But a lot of the time, I’ll turn around and sell off the pieces that I didn’t really ever want, but had to buy to get the piece that I wanted.

Having said that, someday my collecting journey will end. Hopefully not because it’s the end of everything, but simply because it’s time to move on, and I’m ready to cash out to help fund my retirement. Probably still a few decades away.

And if I’m honest, if someone comes along that is crazy enough to pay me many multiples of what it’s worth, I would probably sell my collection even earlier. But while it’s an interesting hypothetical, it seems highly improbable.

I rarely sell things and when I do it's usually because I have a dupe of the card or I've just want to thin things out and have a few $$ for something else that interests me more at that time.

There was an interesting thread recently about heirs being able to value cards/collectibles at the date of death of the collector.
This seems to provide some possibly interesting tax advantages for the heirs.
But then again, if you're looking at 1000s of cards, it would become an undertaking unless the heirs had a clue about current values.

I knew someone that sold off a significant portion of his collection so that his family wouldn't have to deal with it. But that was a while back before tax reporting for AHs or even fleabay became a "thing".

Sad Story. Some people weren't ready to sell.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/20/us/ne...rnd/index.html

Like article stated, we are just "custodians" of items until the next collector comes along and adds it to theirs..

Don’t forget the old adage that no one can stop you from being buried with your cards…

Although I suspect that my wife and kids would probably slip in reprints, and sell the originals.

My condolences, Clint. Both of my parents died in a three month period last summer, and it definitely rebalances your mental portfolio in ways you might not have expected. I've always been willing to sell stuff for the right price, but now selling something from my PC seems far less consequential than it was a decade ago. I am not only contemplating selling a lot more stuff, my purchases have fallen way off. I haven't even kept up with my International Boxing HOF collection for the class of 2023 named in December. Normally, I'd go run down something for each inductee very soon after the election.

If/when I start selling a few cards, it will be to fund any traveling trips we plan on taking. One just might be on the horizon.

Thanks Adam and my condolences to you as well. It definitely changes your perspective.

I intend to keep until death. It’s possible I’ll sell off certain things I’ve accumulated and don’t value much, but the core will not be going anywhere, unless I really screw up and get myself into a financial problem where I have no real choice. There’s little point in retirement if I must sell everything; I look forward to retirement so I can spend more card time and having fun. Plus, it would be breaking a number of deals I’ve made with people I’ve got stuff from if I just turned around and sold the items to realize a profit.

Selling to cover medical bills. Some cards I will not sell.

For me, when I was collecting cards, it just became too much for me. I wanted to collect everything (with modern cards that's easy to do). It became too expensive, plus I had boxes and boxes of cards that I rarely looked at. That's when I decided to switch from baseball cards to baseball game used memorabilia. There's not a lot of baseball game used memorabilia to choose from, so it's much easier for me to be selective in what I buy, and it helps me keep things under control with my spending. I think I just hit a wall with collecting cards, so it was easy for me to sell them. I didn't have any regrets.

At the end of the day pre-war cards are pieces of old cardboard with renderings of dead former baseball players on them that 99.9% of the world has never heard of. I think you're on the right track.

My current mindset is that I will likely sell my collection once I retire…gradually… to supplant my income and minimize the tax burden.

One of the things that pushed me persobnally away from cards a bit is just the never ending sales of more and more. And more and more discoveries. I have a decent looking card I'm happy with, and now there are 15 of them at auction this very minute far superior to mine. I know the answer is be happy with what you have, but the specialness of some of this seems to have waned for me in the never ending auction cycle we now live in. A massive catalog gets dropped on my front steps now once a week. What was special now is just a regular churn. Obviously many people feel differently.

A card is a card is a card. The player never owned it and never touched it. Memorabilia is a different story in many cases.

After 35 or so years in the hobby my wants have changed many many times. I sell the stuff I no longer care about to feed my newest collecting wants.

With the bigger cards I do what I call card renting. Over time I have owned many of the big cards. I just don't have more than a few at a time. I sell one to own another.

I was gifted many vintage(1960s) cards as a little kid. I never got into collecting till my late teens. So I have always sold cards to make new purchases. After those 35 or so years in the hobby I have never spent a single penny out of pocket for any of my collection.

So if you see me selling something it is to buy something else.:)

I'm nearly the opposite of the OP.

I hardly ever sell anything.

And my collection, while generally cheaper stuff other than some lucky buys is very wide ranging. I suspect some of it is in the "unique but not really desirable" category. Like newspaper ad supplements with sports figures in the ads. Not old, and who saved that stuff from the 80's or 90's?

Now that I'm pretty sure the kids won't want to continue the collection that's changing. Sort of sad and happy all at once.

That is one of the reasons I switched. Collecting cards for more than 30 years was a blast! But with modern cards, it was just becoming too much and too expensive; and I quit long before all of this craziness of today. If these current modern collectors, flippers, or investors think 10 years from now they will get even close to half the amount they are paying today for these high dollar cards...it's not happening.

But even since I stopped collecting cards, I still like looking. Just don't have the desire to pull the trigger for a $75,000 rookie card of a player who is in their 1st or 2nd year and has a lot of potential.

Collecting game used memorabilia is at a much slower pace, but still enjoyable. With cards, I couldn't keep up with what I was buying and what I had in my collection.

I plan to sell all of my stuff before I die; however, I don't know how to determine when that is :)

For me, I mostly sell when I upgrade something. Otherwise, everything else is PC.

Steve, what you said about people asking why you are selling is interesting. I have been approached as well and know several of members that were asked this same question. Very strange, I wonder why all the spin up. Personally, I don't care why someone sells, it has no bearing on my collection.

Probably everyone trying to decide when the music stops, and therefore when it's time to get out before the market crashes.

Maybe they are hoping you need some cash and they can get a good deal buying some of your cards at bargain prices.

Most people that inquire why are looking for an angle or are paranoid, not confident in the market or cards.

Good question. I am 61 and have a lot of cards. Complete, or near complete sets of most Goudey, Payballs, Topps (up to 80), Bowman, plus about 3000 lower condition Topps/Bowman doubles. And I'm still buying. I've always thought that when I reached about 70 I would start selling off a lot of the bulk, cards/sets that don't mean that much to me. Easy to say now, will be tough when I reach 70. I will probably adjust my plan to start when I am 75 :-)

I am thinking about selling also. Been collecting for 50 years. I collect for the enjoyment of the hobby not for the financial aspect. I do not ever recall selling a single card in all my years of collecting.

But as I grow older, material things just do not seem as important to me any longer. I have no heirs. A couple of my nephews love the NBA and NFL but show no interest in baseball much less collecting. I may will my collection to one of the nephews so he may liquidate and enjoy the proceeds. Not really willing to sell to a dealer.

For me, I need to collect cards that I don't see every day.

And you only get 1 massive catalog a week? You don't bid in enough auctions, apparently!
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At 49 I've been collecting for 40+ years and looking back it seems like once a decade I have a minor/major sell off for one reason or another. This last one has been the biggest and started in 2019/2020 when we decided to build a house, and hasn't really stopped yet. Every month I'm selling more than I'm buying and the more I sell the more I seem to be okay with it.
I'm sure I'll always collect something, but the desire to collect everything and amass rooms full of stuff seems to be long gone.

I only buy and collect cards and other stuff I like and plan to keep. Occasionally I trade. My wife and daughter know what I have and what to do if I should croak. Pertains mainly to the high-value items that are in the safe deposit box.

[QUOTE=Leon;2314063]For me, I need to collect cards that I don't see every day.

That I totally get.

I had a friend who replied, when asked if he would sell any of the 'find' of 1950s Topps he uncovered, "No, that would be like selling my kids"

Agreed or seeking approval for what they spend/collect.