[hawaiian bam bam]

Thank you all for your posts, some very good thoughts! I am glad to see that others have the same problem as me as for a long time i thought i was the only person in the world that has this dilemma. so glad to see im not alone!

For me its hard as this hobby has been a lifelong passion for me for almost 40 years since i was a small child. one reason im not sure if i really want to sell my collection completely is that i feel that if i do sell everything, i will miss it and will just try to buy everything all over again!

There are so many pros and cons to keeping/selling a collection. I feel that buying autographs is like buying a brand new car. once you buy an autograph in most cases (not all) it goes down in value as no one seems to want to pay fair market value for autographs anymore. it seems like everyone wants autographs for dirt cheap (but will sell theirs for alot! its the whole low book value for your cards and high book value for my cards!) trying selling something on EBAY and i swear if I pay $100 for a card, i would be very lucky to get $25-$30 for it! we would all be broke if regular investments had that kind of depreciation! it seems like the only people making money on sports cards are the sellers im buying them from!

for me personally, it comes down to im just tired of living paycheck to paycheck because i buy so many cards! lots debt because of baseball cards as im not very patient and need a card i want right now! that mentality has racked up alot of credit card bills for me.

One big eye opener for me was when my tires got bald and i needed to buy new tires, i had no money too. i had no money in my savings account, no more credit on the credit cards but i had lots and lots of albums and boxes of baseball cards! my wife said why dont you sell some of your extras to pay for the tires. so i did and guess what? i sold enough cards to buy some tires! it was a great feeling to get rid of some of my extra cards to buy some much needed tires. then i saw this nice radio that i wanted. again i had no money, no savings and no more credit left! so, i sold some cards and guess what? i and extra money to get that radio! i did the same for a new pair of shoes, soon, i started listing more and selling more and to be honest i kind of like the extra money to do and buy different things i "really" need.

another big eye opener is when my mom recently passed away she had soooo much stuff. we donated half of it and just threw away the other stuff. the people in her nursing home who probably at one time in their life had possessions and collectibles. were laying there dying with not one of them. i saw with my own eyes that in the end, you cant take your things with you, not even baseball cards! its so true we come into the world with nothing and we can take nothing with us.

The big dilemma for me now is. i have two choices keep all my very favorite autographs and continue to live paycheck to paycheck, continue to be in debt and have no savings or sell my entire collection and for once be debt free, have a savings an no longer live paycheck to paycheck. selling all my cards will finally get me out of debt and allow me to have a clean slate financially, but ill miss my cards! see the dilemma?

oh what to do, what to do? your thoughts please.