Biggest Mistakes as Buyers/Sellers

[ctownboy]

As a seller here are three horror stories I remember.

1) Buying a HUGE collection from a guy who had closed his sports card store. In this collection were unopened packs of baseball, football, basketball and hockey from the early 1980's.

I was in college and when I got these back to my apartment, I called my friends over and we opened these packs like we were little kids again. In the packs I found Larry Bird/Magic Johnson rookie cards, Wayne Gretzky second year cards, Joe Montana and Dan Marino rookie cards and, of course, rookie cards from baseball among other things.

My two mistakes with these cards were a) opening the packs to begin with and b) trading all these cards (because Beckett hadn't come out with a monthly price guide yet for basketball, football or hockey) to a local card store for some 1968 baseball cards I needed for my set and $20 dollars.

2) Buying a couple of collections of basketball cards that included two Wilt Chamberlain rookie cards. Both were in good condition with one being at least near mint. I traded the lesser condition card for some baseball cards and sold the better condition card for $50 dollars.

3) Going to a retail store and finding some basketball packs that had inserts in them. I bought only the packs with the inserts (because they were in the discount section thus meaning nobody had wanted these cards). I went home and opened the packs and pulled the inserts. At the time, Beckett said these were only worth $5 (Akeem Olajuwon) to $10 (Michael Jordan) dollars a piece with the lesser stars worth less.

I sold/traded these cards to a dealer at a flea market who had a market for new basketball cards. About six months later, Beckett came out and said these were really tough inserts. So the Jordan's ($500 dollars each)and Olajuwon's ($200 or $300 dollars each) I sold/traded for cheap were worth way more than what I got out of them. Heck, even the commons were going for $20 or more dollars a piece.

David