What if you were to sell your entire collection
 

I’ve recently started pondering this question because I’m considering expanding an unrelated business. I could fund this will my collection. Defiantly not a done deal but an idea. How would you do it? I don’t want it to linger forever but if I did it I’d like it all gone.

I have cards from 1887 to 2025. Thousands of cards. Equipment, Memorabilia, autographs, pennants, some unopened stuff, complete sets, etc.

Just kicking around ideas guys. Thanks

Jon

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Nice stuff but a lot of variety
I would say rea but not sure if they would take all of it
Could set a table at a show
and have sign All must go”
Or going out of business
I too been thinking of liquidating all my cards but
It’s too hard as grail cards

At some point, I suspect we all end up there, although it might be posthumously for some of us. I'm still a solid decade or more away, but have been contemplating it as a real possibility in the future. And in the meantime, I've been paring back my collection to eliminate pieces that don't really float my boat.

If you're in a hurry, consider selling off the stuff that is in high demand to start. Pick your favorite channel and go for it. Auctions can be a nice way to go simply because you know it's going to sell, and it forces bidders to get in the game now, rather than having your item sit and sit and sit while potential buyers try to decide whether they are ready to pull the trigger on your piece, or whether they want to wait for something else.

With any luck, the amount you raise from selling the high demand pieces will be a good start to funding your enterprise.

Then you can take your time with the stuff where demand is thin so that you can find the right buyer, possibly through a private sale, with that buyer paying your price (or something close), rather than having to settle for selling it at a big discount simply because you can't wait and need the cash now.

sell
 

Yea,
very tough to pull the trigger and sell your lifelong collection !

..very tough decision

b/s/t?
 

Throw some groups of larger lots on the b/s/t.
"Paul Molitor Collection - $x"
"Deacon Phillippe Collection - $y"
"N172 OJ Collection - $z"

Rea
 

My biggest concern is always the integrity of the auction house (defined as no shill bidding). So I have been going with REA and am very happy. Will they take EVERYTHING? I have no idea. Before you go to ANY auction house please take the time or organize it all. IMHO that's very important. Make lists. I assure you it will pay off in terms of your image as a consigner. Peace.

If you've got slabs and they're worth over $100 each, REA's marketplace is running a 5% commission deal. You set the price, they list it and do the work, they get 5%. I've sold several three-figure cards with them in the last month and I plan to send them more. It lets me sell at a reasonable price because I keep 95% of the sale price. That's probably the closest to net retail you will get without actually doing the dirty work of retailing.

For raw stuff or less valuable stuff, I'd start right here with the BST threads. You do the work but you set the price and terms and keep 100%.

If you just want to move it, period, for cash, I'd suggest calling one of the reputable dealers who do wholesale buys. If you are willing to consign, you can't go wrong with REA. LOTG and Sterling. I've done buying and selling business with all of them for decades w/o any qualms. Al (LOTG) is on my wife's call list if I drop dead and she wants to liquidate; I have that much confidence in his honesty and integrity that I'd send a non-collector widow to him.

Yes, but chances are you will never look back with any regrets, and in fact might have a lot of fun having the funds to pick up some stuff with a new focus.

Really depends on how much time and work you want to put into selling everything. The higher end stuff should be fairly easy to sell yourself in a short time. The lower end stuff could take a very very long time to sell.

With a huge variety of values if you want to sell at fast and easy as possible I would contact fellow member Aquarian Sports Cards(Scott Russell) as he would probably take a lot more of the lower end stuff with the better stuff than the big AHs.

I can only speak for myself here.

If it were me, I'd probably either sell everything to Chris Sewell or consign everything to Scott Russell. In either case, I'd likely have the opportunity to move everything in a single day/transaction. Granted, there are more "profit-maximizing" ways to approach this. However, there's also the matter of enticing someone to take everything in one shot. Things like a '56 Mantle, T206 HOFers, and a Gretzky rookie make the pile more appealing to the dealer/auctioneer.

Whatever the hell you do, don't ever let this happen to you & family

https://patch.com/florida/southtampa...n-be-auctioned

Cant go wrong with Aquarian Sports Cards !

There are plenty of auction houses which will take everything. For those who mention REA -- don't forget they also have Huggins and Scott for items

Scott (Aquarian) is a good option, Scott Brockleman is a good option, Sterling is a good option, etc etc etc. (If I missed someone we'll add them). Chris Sewell's partner in the auction lives here in DFW and he/they are good people.. Just pick who you end up being most comfortable with.

What am I missing? Did it go horribly wrong somehow?

Oh, and thanks for the multiple shout outs, that was really cool to see!

I pretty much agree with Adam. You can't go wrong just consigning the cards to LOTG or REA. I'd skip the fixed price listing and just give it all to one of those two. They will do a great job for you.

When I was in the Navy at one point I was stationed at Charleston SC. I met up with a retired Radioman Chief who had a colossal collection of vintage. Through him, I really got back into the hobby, and most of my vintage came from him. When he finally decided to give it up as both a collector and a seller, he kept the ones he treasured the most and consigned the bulk of his vast collection to a local Charleston auction house that had been established for decades in the South Carolina low country area. In the end it went for way more than he ever envisioned; enough that he and his wife could do the things they really wanted to do. He had no regrets at all.

I could never sell.. I collect.

Jon, I assume you will want to devote your time to expanding the unrelated business, as opposed to spending time selling your large collection in bits and pieces. If I were in your shoes, I would consign every card/item valued at roughly $500 or more to LOTG or REA, and I would consign every card/item valued at less than $500 to Aquarian or Sterling. Auction house integrity is of the highest importance to me, and I have absolutely no doubt as to the integrity of the 4 auction houses I mentioned. And, for full disclosure, I have consigned to 3 of these auction houses and been fully satisfied with the results.

I recently consigned about 95% of my collection to REA and COMC

I have other things I want to focus on right now: travel, investing, a house, etc.

You get one life, go enjoy it

It’s just cardboard

Completely agree. Having the house and cars paid for outright is HUGE.

There are plenty of outright buyers for your collection intact.

You obviously need an inventory and some idea of valuation to go this route.

Or, if you know the number you need to fund the other business venture and you think the collection is worth that to someone, that could be a good jumping off point.

Obviously, an outright buyer unless a collector would be looking to make money in the long run and the work involved to do that has to be considered.

It is true the auction houses do all the work but there will necessarily be a lot of larger lots to sell the bulk and lots often fall well short of true value in an auction setting. Depending on the value of the collection, you might get a very favorable consignment rate with some of the larger auction houses.

Good luck in the venture but I would not rule out simply selling the collection as a one time transaction.

I assume you've researched the value with all your inventoried graded material (Those will sell). If you have time, you might think about shopping all the graded stuff at any major card show. Cash is King!--a friend of mine sent a 1976 Robin Yount PSA 10 for auction, it brought a little over a thousand, not bad for a modern card! Another takes his modern graded cards and walks around to dealers tables at Nashville, usually leaves with 2-6 thousand cash a trip, of course as excepted he gets many low ball offers. just goes to the next. I did sell my 1934 Lou Gehrig on here and a few other tougher cards on B/S/T--so its an option too. eBay's a lot of work with 13 percent fees to boot, but it has a million buyers.

There are hundreds of serious buyers out there, might check out say Beckett Vintage Magazine page after page of buyers and AH-- good luck!

My take is similar to the above but slightly different

The key points

1. Flick some items you and or family member want to keep because you like it or memories attached to it.
Sometimes it is not all about the money.
2. Go thru and find the rarest items and try and sell them last (if possible) so if you raise enough funds you will not have to sell the items hardest to replace.
3. Take the emotions out of the rest of it so it does not distract you from making good business decisions
4. Good luck in you business endeavors
5. On this net54 forum there are some people that are perfect for the type of liquidation you are looking to do Leon would know who they are better than I.
6. Make your business a success and then replace whatever you need to replace

Then again money is just paper :D

Good luck on whatever way you go.

I sold my first collection for good reasons (I had/have no money). Doing so was life altering in a good way.

Then, if you are still into collecting, you can start over in a smaller way...

His collection brought many, many millions to his family. I would hope my family would be happy with that outcome.

Have never understood the “I’ll never sell” mentality

Forcing your family to deal with it after you die just doesn’t make sense

Don, depending on your tax situation, having your heirs liquidate a collection may save a ton in capital gains and state income taxes due to the basis step-up on death. Everyone with a valuable collection needs to assess their tax circumstances carefully before selling any valuable and highly appreciated asset, assuming that there is no need for the money during your life. Why lay out as much as a third in Federal capital gains and state income taxes if you don't have to? Unless things change radically for me, I plan to leave my daughter with a package of cards that she can sell with little or no taxes owed.

I wrote an article on what it is like to sell and how to do it; might be of interest to the OP:

https://adamstevenwarshaw.substack.c...ing-it?r=ff7k7

Couldn't agree more. I know a lot of people that one of the couple hoarded/collected stuff and the living one almost always hates having to get rid of all their spouses junk/fine collectables. Then to make it more fun you almost always have kids and others fighting over their "fair share".

Problem with that theory Val is that if all of the good stuff is gone I don't want just the leavings. We take everything, but there's got to be something there that makes the effort worthwhile. Or we'll take nothing. If you have items that we want we'll break everything down much further than most other companies.

I've recently given it some thought. Earlier this year I was scammed by someone who had misrepresented themselves as a Citibank financial advisor. At first I just pushed her away thinking she was trying to sell me stocks or crypto or something else I wasn't interested in. I've only been interested in baseball cards. But she persisted, and I thought what the heck; it was kind of like having a pen pall, right? Well, she eventually confided to me how she had a little secret way of earning money through short-term cryptocurrency trades and that her nodes formulations & calculations could earn her big money regardless of which direction the crypto went. That should have alarmed me right there, but those hand-written derivatives formulas were pretty convincing. So I traded with her, and it looked like I had earned over $40,000 in just two sessions. However, I believe she was able to manipulate the app in a way that made it look like money was moving around, but it was just numbers, not money or actual crypto.

Anyway, it was a very sophisticated scam, and in the end I wound up with my life savings snatched away. I actually found out when a third party contacted me out of the blue, and when I mentioned what was going on she told me it sounded eerily similar to what one of her friends had experienced with a netizen who had created a bogus crypto app and then made it disappear along with a ton of his money! In my case, I believe the app was legitimate, but was hacked.

So then I became suspicious. But my next move made things worse - with a Google search, I contacted a person who had misrepresented himself as a fraud specialist, and this guy also defrauded me through dummy transactions.

So in all, I wound up losing $130,000. It was enough to make me weep and think about selling my collection, as I went from just over $100,000 in the bank and $25,000 in debt (zero percent credit cards) to very little in the bank and $50,000 in debt, with higher interest bearing debt. But instead I opted for a personal loan, and thankfully still have my collection, although I did sell some graded cards I thought were pretty ugly and planned on selling eventually anyway.

I'm not sure why I am sharing all of this in the context of replying to another member's deliberation about selling, except that I do feel a kinship toward this community overall and have dealt with many of you guys over the years. Maybe it's good to make stuff like this known just to reduce the potential for it happening to someone else here. And if you're in the middle of something like this, get out before you start trading. A local detective whom I know personally told me that my money would never be recovered, and to stay away from crypto!

Rob, that's awful. Everyone always thinks "I'm too smart, I'd never fall for that" When, as you've shown, it can happen to anyone. Thanks for sharing something that must be painful, for our benefit.

Wow, that's horrible, Rob. No one is too smart for a scam. I had to pull my father's @$$ out of the fire a few times when he was in his 80s, then I took over his finances to prevent more "I think I f***ed up" panicked calls. I have had many clients cheated out of lots of money over the years, even including a judge.

I am a Reagan fan when it comes to anyone asking for money: "doveryay, no proveryay" (Trust But Verify). I do my legwork before I deal with anyone. Years of investigating schemes and scumbags as a plaintiffs' attorney has made me paranoid. That, and I assume that anyone offering me an investment is selling garbage because anything worth doing the salesman would be doing with their own money and not cold-calling me to buy into it.

I would be happy to make you an offer


Geoff Bedine
Premier Card Collectors
Since 1977

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Awful. No criminals are "good" criminals, but these folks are among the worst, IMO.

That sucks Rob, sorry to hear it. I have a friend since we were little kids have something very similar happen. He figured out a couple months ago that his entire life savings was gone.:(

So sorry to hear that Rob and thanks for posting as a reminder to stay vigilant with our finances.

My issue is slightly different. I may sell a set here and there before I die, but not everything. My issue has been estate planning/liquidation and how best to liquidate when you have no one in a very small family who knows little about the value and has no interest.....and is not able or willing to make sure it is sold properly which yields a fair value when sold. I have been taking action by writing some instructions for my successor trustee. And, I have spoken to a couple of auction houses which seems willing to take the entire collection, and not cherry pick.

Have a knowledgeable hobby friend run point for your estate.

Thank you, friends. I don't mean to hijack the thread, but the threat of fraud is definitely out there and becoming more cunning, sophisticated, and widespread than every before, especially with the access of social media.

What's wrong with that? He died happy with his cards. Would he have died happier with a whole pile of greenbacks instead? Or are you suggesting he should have sold his cards early enough to spend all the cash on hookers and blow?

:confused:

+1

It’s not a bad outcome. But its nice to at least have some info left behind so your family knows what to do.

If they don't love/appreciate the cards/stuff, their "fair share" is zero.

Another good option is to talk to Steve Verkman of Clean Sweep and Lelands. He can cover full ground on all ranges of cards. Knowledgeable, honest and fair as well. I have dealt with Steve for almost 40 years (yikes!).

This may be hard to grasp, but some people consider their wife/partner and kids to be equals or at least worth consideration in their life...especially once their life is over and they have ownership of things they have little idea about.

My wife knows what to do with my cards if I should check out early even if it means only getting 70-80% of the return if she would do it in a more attentive way. I know we don't need the money, so I've told her the best way to get rid of them with the least amount of hassle and which card(s) mean the absolutely most to me if she wants to keep that part of my memory around for herself.

Hmmmm. Yes, it is indeed tough to grasp. That's something at which I suppose I could work, but I've always been more into subjects such as Math, History, Geography, Chemistry, Economics, Latin, etc. The Psychology stuff I've always left to others.

;)

He did. He had pre-arranged with Memory Lane to liquidate his collection for his family. They devoted an entire auction catalog to his collection a few years ago. He had a long relationship with them and they had helped him procure a lot of his incredible cards.

sell
 

I never knew you enjoyed Latin LOL

Oh, absolutely! It was one of my strong subjects between ninth and twelfth grades. And I still have a very keen interest in Roman and ancient history in general.

:cool: