Garage/Estate Sale Success?

[GasHouseGang]

Originally Posted by ajjohnsonsoxfan

Brian you got me...that was my early April fools joke. This is a reprint set my son and I glued to a board and had framed. Would be great to find a complete Goudey set at a yard sale though...!

I had a feeling, but I thought it might be possible. I guess you got me.

[ls7plus]

I used to have a connection with a friend who regularly handled estate sales and had him on the alert to watch for baseball cards and/or memorabilia. All he ever came up with in years of looking were '80's cards. I think its just been known for too long that these items can be of significant value for significant items to pop up in these venues, except on very, very rare occasions.

Regards,

Larry

[RobDerhak]

http://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=209064

Hasn't happened since...but this was just last year...I have had some decent scores since then...same Estate Sale company had a sale a couple months back where every card was $3...some decent stuff, best being a G-VG '69 Bench, but I also did get a '69 Bert Campaneris & '69 Freddie Patek that are at PSA right now that I think may get 9's (Campy may actually get a 10) for $3 each...but most of what was at that one was junky 80s/90s

[T205Guy]

Several years ago at an estate sale I picked up an album with nearly complete sets of all three T87 Wings Cigarette cards. They were neatly mounted with "photo" corners and were in EXMT condition. I also picked up a Jackie Robinson bat (EX) and a Sal Maglie glove also in (EX) condition. I paid $3.00 for the lot! I also had some luck two years ago at a small antique/thrift store in VA when I picked up a T205 Wilhelm (suffe ed) glued to a piece of scrapbook paper for $20.00. I soaked it off and it graded Authentic due to some paper loss.

[slidekellyslide]

I got a Nolan Ryan rookie at a tag sale a few years back...on the SECOND day of the sale. I skipped the first day and attended the second day where everything was half off. They had about 40 small stacks of cards rubber banded together for a couple bucks each, I hit about 5 or 6 of them and found the Ryan rookie. I didn't even look through the rest, I just picked up the shoe box and took all of them. The Ryan rookie was the best card in the lot, but there were a lot of stars too, like Frank Robinson, Roger Maris, Tony Perez, et cetera.

Just last year I hit it big at a garage sale with a ton of 1950s cards including about 200 near mint to mint 1957 Topps cards. I paid about 10 cents each for them. Sold them to a card shop in Omaha for a lot of dough, I'm sure he made a ton on them, but I don't submit to PSA and he does.

If we're talking about local auctions I've made a lot of great scores. Just last year I picked up a photo/scrapbook album of former major leaguer Bill Davidson which included a bunch of photos of himself with other major leaguers, some real photo postcards of Brooklyn players including Zach Wheat which was signed on the back "Buck Wheat". There was also a World Series ticket stub in there from 1913, the game between Mathewson and Plank which went 9 scoreless innings. Matty drove in a run in the 10th and then went out and shut the A's down for the 10 inning shutout.

My best find ever was a Tris Speaker game used bat picked up at a local auction about 6 or 7 years ago. I didn't know it was a gamer until I posted pictures of it to Net54 though.

I've made way too many finds at flea markets to mention all of them, but my best finds include, A Dog's Head cigarette pack, 2 Cameo Pepsin pins that were dead mint, and an early Portland PCL team cabinet photo that was HUGE..the largest cabinet photo I've ever seen.

I don't think it's pure luck to find this stuff though, it's perseverance. I hit garage sales, tag sales, auctions, antique shows and flea markets weekly.

[rjackson44]

I love sales and have found a lot of things. Mainly antiques and my vintage toys you never know😎👍

[ALR-bishop]

My only experience is recounted in part in Love of Game's current and future auctions involving "the Texas Find". I am originally from St Louis but have lived in San Antonio since 1995. St Louis is a baseball town, San Antonio is not. I am a fairly serious post war collector with full Topps, Bowman and Fleer runs.

As Al C has related in his auction preview, my wife was in a church bible class and was telling a friend about a trip we were about to make to Phoenix this past March to see some spring training games with a group of fellow baseball card collectors who gather there each year. Another woman she did not know heard the conversation and related that her husband had died unexpectedly back in 2007 and left behind a "bunch" of baseball cards. She wondered if I would look at it and make some suggestions on how she could sell it.

Because she said he was a lifelong San Antonio resident I went not expecting much, but it took me. 3 days to wonder through it all. Some was well organized but because of his sudden death before retirement, much was spread out all over in boxes and suitcases. Most in a study, full to the brim with every wallfull of shelves full of cards in binders, and packed closet as well. Some was in the garage. Cards , autographed balls and photos, and publications.

A lot of stuff was post 80 and there were hundreds of older and newer minor league sets. But there was a full Bowman and Topps run and a large number of extra autographed 52 cards, including an autographed Campos black star card, some older basketball sets and a few oddball older baseball sets or partial sets.

In the end I put her in touch with a couple of folks, including Al at Love of Game, who the family ultimately chose to sell the collection. The whole event was a lot of fun. Because of the connection my wife and I developed to the family and the fact I recommended him, I can say how pleased I was with how Al Crisafulli handled the entire matter

[tschock]

Originally Posted by slidekellyslide

I don't think it's pure luck to find this stuff though, it's perseverance. I hit garage sales, tag sales, auctions, antique shows and flea markets weekly.

What Dan said above about sums it up best. Almost too many to count for me. I can find something of real value at least twice a month, though not always card related.

So what if you don't find pre-war stuff. You don't think you can turn a pack fresh '76 Payton RC, ALL the '72 FB high number IA cards (Namath, etc) in NM condition, very nice late '60s and early '70s Bobby Orr Topps and OPC cards, '30s Mickey Mouse cards (with one of the booklets), TWO ticket stubs from Bunning's Father's Day perfect game, et al into cash for pre-war baseball cards? All these and more that I've come across in separate instances for pennies on the dollar. Not to mention toys, comics, etc. You just have to expand your searching a little.

[RobDerhak]

Welp, this sale today was total garbage.

It was a dealer that moved his stuff into an estate sale to try to dump it to suckers...problem was, there were no suckers there, just pissed off people. I'm in Kansas City, one dude drove from Fort Worth, TX (about 8 hours) to come to this sale to do nothing but waste his time. All the vintage cards were garbage at NM prices. There were Repo's of 62 Mantle, Montana Rookies, Ryan Rookies, in the card bins (@ $5 each) that were an absolute joke. All of the "Non-Common" $.75 each cards were total over produced junk (to be expected) and anything that was mid-grade that you'd normally find at an estate sale for $.50-$1 a card were marked at $3+ per.

Easy way to illustrate how shady this sale was (as if the counterfeit/repo cards weren't enough)...there were huge (like cases of office paper size) boxes with 9 card sheets in them...probably 500-700 Sheets in the box marked for $40...pretty good deal right? The top 50 or so sheets were solid Ultra Pro or equivalent sheets, but when you dig down in there, you find those shitty crackily ones that stick together and ruin cards the rest of the way down...

Total shit show. There was one other N54 user there (at least) that I was talking with that was as disappointed as I...

http://brownbutton.com/olathe-estate...nebridge-park/