Where is best place to sell signed 1950's Cards

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Posted By: Mike

I acquired a large collection of vintage signed cards from 1950 Bowman thru 1955 Bowman. I have found that although the cards are rare and highly collectible, it is tough to find a format to sell them through. Ebay is not the way and auction houses may not reach the proper bidders on the non HOF players. Many of the players have been deceased since the 60's so they are tough tough autos but if left on Ebay, they could go for opening bid. Any suggestions wold be appreciated and I will also put some info on the B/S/T site. Thanks, Mike

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Posted By: John H.

You could put them on eBay with a minimum opening bid that you would be satisfied with or you could put a reserve price on them, in that same amount, with a lower opening bid.

John

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Posted By: Jimmy Piccuito

I have had a lot of luck selling these at shows - the show in Long Island and a few in New England - I had two full binders of signed cards and some nice cuts from the 1950s all sold within a few months - mostly to one person, but if you can get out there and wait it out at these shows it can be rewarding

take care

Jimmy

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Posted By: peter chao

Autographed '53 Topps are popular. '53 Color Bowman are too pretty to be autographed.

Peter

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Posted By: DJ

Honestly, it all depends on who you have and when they were signed. I have seen signed gum cards from the 1950's like Monte Irvin sell for as little as $5, but those who passed away before the "craze" of sending to ex-players home became after Smalling issued those address books, you will be wasting your time with insertion fees on eBay and you will only face disappointment.

I buy quite a few signed cards on eBay and I have paid as little as $3 for some signed common 1953 Topps cards (which blows my mind if you think about it) and some cards of players who perished in the sixties and fill want lists have sold for $80 or so. I once saw a Ray Oyler sell for $90 and I was like "What?".

You can group them up on eBay, or give them to a company like SCGaynor who will help sell them as they normally get pretty nice prices for items like this.

Good Luck!

DJ

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Posted By: joe

I don't collect auto cards, but Ray Oyler died in 1981, early. He played for the Tigers on the 1968 Championship team, a difficult autograph if it was a 1968 card.

Joe

Ty Cobb, Spikes flying!

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Posted By: Jeff Prillaman

We had a nice collection of auto cards from 1955-1959 two summers ago and ran them individually on ebay with very nice results. The tougher autos brought in the $50-100 range, and the couple of really tough ones were even higher. That's where a 20,000+ feedback rating helps. But of course there were plenty that just brought the opening bid of 4.95 and what didn't get bids we lotted up and sold as a group.


What stinks is that in the group about 3/4 of the 57's had started to fade at one point and so the collector who was a kid at the time decided to darken the signatures by going over them in pen. Clemente, Gil Hodges, the Mantle/Berra card and several other HOF'ers were in that group of re-penned autos.