When to Sell ...

[Exhibitman]

My feeling is that if you enjoy your cards and you don't need to sell, keep them and don't worry about it, other than to leave instructions for your executor as to where to go to liquidate.

That said, I have been contemplating this issue a lot lately as I need to raise some cash for my child's college [she's 15 now] and some cards will have to go to cover it. I also got pretty sick around the end of last year and had to go through some hospital 'fun'. It helped put all of this into perspective. It is all just stuff...really it is. I sometimes get too obsessed with winning, amassing, collecting. Sometimes I need to be reminded that the collection doesn't own me, I own it. I think maybe I'll put a little less energy into collecting and a little more into doing things.

Emotionally, deciding to sell some or all of a beloved collection is a lot like coming to terms with an impending death. One of the first things a very astute friend/auctioneer asked me was whether I had come to terms with the decision itself. I love the scene in All That Jazz where the comedian riffs on Kubler-Ross’s breakdown of the five stages of death:

“This chick, man, without the benefit of dying herself, has broken down the process of dying into five stages: anger, denial, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Sounds like a Jewish law firm. 'Good morning, Angerdenialbargainingdepressionacceptance!'”

I found myself going back and forth through these feelings. Denial was first for me. I kept thinking--honestly thinking--that the money thing would somehow just work out. Then, when I realized that the math was inexorable, I was so pissed off that I had to sell my collection ... the tantrum happens. Closely followed by depression. I heard that depression is rage turned inwards, and that makes a lot of sense to me that I would mope around for a while after fuming. I was soooo pissed about having to sell that the reality of it just bummed me out completely. The bargaining was really interesting because it took the form of triage. The math is part of the bargain: a slow bleed, selectively done, maximizing my returns on each item. I can live with that.

I’ve never been a ‘own ten top flight cards and nothing else’ kind of collector, yet I’ve also never fallen into the completist category. In other words, I have a big-ass pile of stuff that doesn’t necessarily lend itself to being sold in neat groupings. For me, the first step in the process of really coming to terms with liquidating was dividing the collection into three groups: Items I really like and want to keep collecting, items I think are a good investment to hold, and everything else.

One thing I've done is get rid of the slabs. Over the last few years I’ve picked up three or four smallish accumulations of postwar cards from various non-collectors. In sorting out the materials and comparing them to what I already had, I realized that I am just as happy having lower grade cards as higher grade cards. My first plan was to liquidate all of the higher grade slabbed mainstream postwar cards and replace them with lower grade raw cards. I’ve been doing that and it has been pain-free; in fact, the rule I made for myself is that when I sell one I pick up a replacement, so it has been actually a bit of a gas to see how much I can get for the slabbed card and how little I can roll over into the raw card.