selling collection - need advice

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Posted By: Justin Brooks

I have about 40,000 cards of 1980s, 90s 2000s baseball cards, and 10,000 football cards from same era. Everything from 1986 steve young rookies, to Brett Favre and Tom Brady cards. Everything from Roger Clemens Rookies, 1980 topps cards, to Chipper JOnes rookies, Derek Jeter rookies...and EASILY 5K worth of "rookie, insert and star cards"... 90% of the cards , i havent even looked at in 10+ years...so there is a bunch of decent cards ( not 50k ) worth, that are in the boxes, that are rookies and such

I realize that although the collection is probaby easily worth more than 10K, im not even gonna get half of that....but im looking for the best avenue to at least maximize... I DEF. want to sell ALL of it at once, EBAY seems like a good route, but it would take a day to list all the $$$(valuable ) cards.... I was thinking going to a dealer, but It would take a day to fill my TAHOE, and about 3 hours for him to look through, and i dont want to get ( seriously low-balled )

Any Suggestions? im allll ears

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Posted By: James Gallo

If you want to maximize your return you will need to put in some work. I would go through them, pull out the major cards, see if anything is worth grading and go from there. If you try to sell this as a whole lot on ebay you will shoot yourself in the foot.

At the very least try to break it down to a few smaller lots, maybe by year but certainly by sport.

To sell bulk you need the key cards, so pulling them out won't help, but it will hurt to sell a small number of major cards with 5000+ commons.

I might have some interest depending on local and cost. Feel free to drop me an email.

Oh and if you had any questions almost all the cards from those years were way overproduced and commons are near worthless (at least from 86 on.

James G

Looking for 1915 Cracker Jacks and 1909-11 American Caramel E90-1.

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Posted By: Geno

If you have the catalog values, can you use them as the value for a tax deduction? If so, it would probably maximixe your profit if you sold key cards individually (say, >$50 in the guide), and donated the rest to a children's hospital or something along those lines. Not only would it come off your taxes, but the kids would probably like rifling through them while waiting for the doctor to show up...

Take Care,
Geno

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Posted By: Rick McQuillan

Justin, I have bought and sold a lot of these 80's, 90's, and 00's collections over the past few years. My advice is - don't get your hope up. You will be lucky if you average 20% of the book value for these cards. 5000 count boxes of commons sell at card shows for ten bucks. You can get between 10 cents and a quarter for 1980's and 90's stars like Ripken, Ryan, Yount, Brett, Arod, etc., even though Beckett stills lists them at a $2-$3 each. Stars that were hot when you collected hold little value now, like Frank Thomas, Griffey, Montana, Elway. If you have some good quality rookie cards in mint condition you may get 50cents on the dollar, and the insert cards that were so expensive and popular in the 90's are virtually worthless, even though our friends at Beckett still show a high book value for many of them.

I wish you well, and I hope that you find someone who will offer you a fair price for the lot.

Rick

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Posted By: Anonymous

Justin,

I seem to be about your age. I also collected as a kid in the eighties. Of course my grandparents and parents all told me what a great investment sets would be, how they'd be worth a lot one day. About half my birthday/holiday gifts growing up where sets from my parents. 86 Topps, 87 Topps, 90 Topps Traded, 86 Sportflics, you name it.

Yesterday I went over to my mother's and thumbed through some of the old cards I had bought as a kid - you know, the 87 Fleer Will Clark rookie I paid $30 for, and the 87 Fleer Bobby Bonilla right behind it. Then you have the Jose Canseco's.

I'd say our generation didn't make out quite as well.

I like the advice above of taking out the valuable cards and giving the rest to charity (if they'll take them). You could probably legally write them off at book value (five cents per common, etc.) which is far more than you will ever be paid by anyone else for them.

Regards,

Jamie

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Posted By: Justin Brooks

thank you!