Observations from a yard sale - 80s/90s junk cards

[buymycards]

I bought 250,000 cards, in 5k count boxes, in January and another 250,000 in April.

There are some real dogs in some of the boxes, such as 5000 1995 Pinnacle football cards that are stuck together like concrete. There also some boxes with nothing but 1988 Score commons and some boxes where every card has corner damage. I threw 80,000 cards in the garbage and gave another 20,000 cards to my grand sons.

I went through pretty much every card in every box, pulling out all of the stars, inserts, parallels, and rookies. So that left me with 90,000 cards that have some value for bundling them for sale on eBay or setting up at a show with 25 cents and 10 cent boxes, which I have done in the past with amazing results.

I met a person who has bought every one of the 5000 count boxes of commons for $12 each, even though he has been told several times that he won't find stars, inserts, parallels, or rookies, but he is bundling them by team and selling them in large lots.

While going through the boxes, I have found items such as:

A Kobe rookie that I sold for $275.

35 Dirk Nowitzki rookies that I sold for $30 each.

Non Sports and Marvel type inserts by the dozens that sell for $5 to $10 each.

Topps Heritage and Bowman Heritage short prints and short printed rookies.

A couple of thousand singles that are either going on eBay or going to COMC.

And lots of obscure items that you don't see every day, such as several dozen CBA team sets, Action packed inserts, 100's of vintage hockey cards and many many others.

I love going through the boxes. It is like going on a treasure hunt every night when I go through a couple of boxes while my wife and I are watching TV. I am retired, so I spend my days pricing, scanning and listing cards.

As far as garage sales go, I can find many items that I can make money on. Political pins, political bumper stickers, bobble heads, cards, photos, and dozens of other items. As one of our fellow board members once said, I am one of those "armpit collectors". If I can buy something for a buck and sell it for $3-$5 with very little effort, I am happy. I have 3200 items in my eBay store, so I have a constant flow of items that are selling.