Long story short, I need some advice

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Posted By: Paul Stratton

I'll spare you the details of how this came about but the situation is as follows: I am meeting tomorrow with an 80 year old man who has a collection of 600,000 vintage cards. I will get first look and have the chance to buy whatever I want out of the collection. We have only spoken over the phone and he has informed me in general terms what the collection consists of but, he has mentioned tobacco cards, as well as, large collections of pre-50's cards and memorbilia.

My question is : How do I approach this? Buy what I want, buy everything, consign the collection, etc.

Any advice would be appreciated. I know the description sounds pretty vague but I have reason to believe there are some rare things in this collection. Many of you have been in this situation before and I was wondering what you have done or better yet would have done if you could do it over again.

Thanks in advance, Paul

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Posted By: barrysloate

Be honest with him, be informative, show him that you have an expertise with his material. Tell him the various options for disposing of his collection, and help him make a decision. Cherrypicking is great for you but it might not be in his best interests. 600,000 vintage cards seems almost impossible. I didn't think there were even that many in the hobby. Good luck with it. It's so large that you may have to go with a big auction house and take a finder's fee.

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Posted By: T206Collector

a few months ago, but only about 1,000 cards from the early 1950's. I brought prices of some of the key cards from those sets in various conditions from ebay, to show what the actual selling prices were of some of his cards in the last few weeks or even days in some cases. That way, he knew the right prices, and I was able to avoid him looking at a price guide, which always starts with money in the thousands -- but for mint condition cards, of course. The hardest thing to tell people with Mickey Mantles in their collection is that those two creases make the card worth low-hundreds, not high thousands. Once we got to a reasonable value estimate for the collection, I told him I could either help him sell through ebay, with a percentage commission because of the time it would take me to scan all the cards and get the important ones graded. Or he could accept cash on the spot, and not deal with weeks of waiting it out. He took the cash, at an amount that made us both happy, and I spent my Christmas holiday selling off the collection, except for two Mantles (53 Topps and 54 Bowman, both in VG condition) as well as about 50 1954 Bowman cards in pretty nice shape, making back my money and then some, plus getting to keep some nice cards to boot.

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Posted By: JimB

That brings up a good point. People outside of the hobby often do not understand how condition affects the value of cards. If you have any graded cards in a variety of grades I would bring them as examples and show a price guide that distinguishes the relative value of the cards for the given prices.
JimB

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Posted By: Paul Stratton

I appreciate the replies. I'm assuming the majority of the cards are "post war" for sure. I thought the same thing when I heard the 600,000 number. I myself have 3200 count boxes filled with who knows what.

I also have reason to believe he "knows" what he has. I'm not going to try to swindle some old man anyway but am just trying to figure out what is fair.

I know it all depends on what's there and what condition it's in but is there a "volume discount" percentage you guys consider fair when you do deals?

Thanks for the info and I'll let you know how it goes.

P.S.

I love all the great info on this board. I snoop all the time to learn and enjoy every minute spent.