Breaking up Sets
 

I have a complete baseball card collection (26 cards) of the 1928 W513 strip cards. I just graded 10 of the cards, Hack Wilson, Pie Traynor and and so forth. The grades from SGC were all good, generally 2-6. I was thinking of grading the remaining raw cards, and selling the set. My question-is it better for the hobby to break up sets and sell individual cards, allowing other collectors to finish their sets, or to keep complete sets together and sell as a lot? I was curious how this issue is viewed in the hobby. Thanks


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A majority of the time (90%?) the best way is to sell individually.

Some auctionhouses will let you auction them off both ways at once and the highest overall bids win, but that has failed some of them in the past when they stopped the auction early because the set had no additional bids during their 15 minute window to close individual lots, while the bidding for the individual cards continued throughout the night.

There isn't an answer that will be right every single time. Most of the time, breaking sets will make the most money. But if the set is low grade, or doesn't have any super expensive singles, it can be better to do it as a set.

My “thank you” goes to the two people who responded to my question. Primarily, I was interested in opinions about whether it was unprofessional to break up complete sets. I assumed I would make more money selling the cards individually, not as a set, but I would be separating a set that someone had curated over some period of time.


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My opinion, from the stand point of one who concentrates on a team and not set collecting, is that, if you are not interested in maximizing profit, selling them individually would benefit the hobby more. This would allow more people to enjoy the cards vice one person who is a set collector. The other thing is there may be many set collectors out there who need only one or a couple cards to finish their sets so again, more people in the hobby would benefit. Just my humble opinion.

I would simply ask myself the following questions.

Did I buy these as a set, or individually?

If I were to do it again, then how would I prefer to do it?

I think at the point you are going to sell, you might as well max out your investment. Generally, as others have said and with a set like that, breaking it up will bring more money. Nothing unprofessional at all. They are your cards, do with them as you please.
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