This is a question about tactics, not trying to sell stuff... thus... the lounge.

I've got a shit load of baseball cards that I've had since childhood. I know I have a lot of really good stuff in there, but I have 0 motivation to go and price everything. Right now, they're all in a very large box that I keep in my closet that I want to get rid of. What's the best way to sell these things and not get completely ripped off?

Offer all of them for one lump sum? How much should i charge? A few things I have are:

Stadium Club complete sets (1993, I beleive)
Upper Deck complete set of holograms (special edition, numbered, in original box)
Signed Nolan Ryan card with certificate of authenticity
Signed Dave Justice ball with certificate
signed Steve Avery ball (useless now, might as well play catch with it)
Signed John Smoltz card with certificate
Dave Justice Silver Ticket (commemorative ticket after he hit the go-ahead home run in the 6th game against the Indians in the 95 World Series).

Um, a bunch of other shit, but that's for starters... what do ya'll think?

1/30/2006 4:05:41 PM

I got $5 on a Chico Lind rookie card.





















no I really don't.

1/30/2006 4:19:45 PM

i have a photo of me with chico lind from like 1987

i treasure it

1/30/2006 4:33:26 PM

I'd at least do a little bit of homework and find out which stuff that you have that is worth money. Then I'd put that stuff on ebay as individual auctions. You could put the rest on ebay as a lot of "collectibles."

1/30/2006 6:25:00 PM

I've got like 20,000 cards but I think it costs more to ship them then they're worth. At least that what I found last time I looked at ebay. Typically, the sets I purchased from 1990 are actually worth less then the purchase price. If you figure out how to sell em, let me in on your secret.

1/30/2006 8:53:10 PM

sports card auctions and shows is where the money is at. ebay isnt worth it when u factor in shipping and the percentage cut ebay takes.

1/30/2006 9:09:37 PM

the value of baseball cards have dropped dramaticly since ebay. the value of my cards dropped by more than half.

1/30/2006 9:10:06 PM

just hold on to them until you are like 80... then sell them and buy some crazy drugs, go out on top

1/31/2006 12:30:15 AM

Quote :

"the sets I purchased from 1990 are actually worth less then the purchase price"

You obviously bought cards right near the peak of overproduction. 1987 Topps (the ones with the woodgrain background) are everywhere thus they are worth virtually nothing. I think the industry (Topps anyway) started to stop overproducing shortly after that. Then the companies started putting out like 25 subsets a year with all of the special super hard to find numbered cards and such, making the basic card sets worth a fraction of the subsets.

In 1990, you could buy a pack of cards for 50 cents or less. And you got 15 cards. Now a pack of cards costs $2 or more and you get like 8 cards. If you want cards that are worth anything (the subsets) you have to buy lots of packs and boxes of cards to get anything. Or just buy the cards you want on ebay.

If I buy cards on ebay, they are either sealed sets or boxes or graded cards.

1/31/2006 1:29:56 AM

This is actually worse than those fags who collect magic cards

1/31/2006 2:31:09 AM

If you absolutely have to sell them, do your homework on what you have. Check price guides and look at completed auctions on eBay to see what those items routinely go off for.

I have some pretty good shit and I'm just going to hang on to all of it until I'm in my 50's or so. The ideal situation is to hold off as long as you can and wait until there are less items in the marketplace, thanks to all those moms that throw shit out. Then you'll get some good value.

1/31/2006 2:40:16 AM

^^ i know you're just trolling, but it's nowhere close

1/31/2006 8:58:49 AM

pm me, know a guy off of gorman that is big time into bb cards........... prolly buy the whole lot

1/31/2006 9:33:29 PM

ive got an 87 topps barry bonds

i took it to a mudcats vs pittsburgh exhibition game long ago and had him autograph it. when i tried to sell it years ago the guy offered me 5 bucks cause it was written on hahahaha. i realize that does take away the mint condition, but i wonder what its worth to a real collector/fan of his

2/20/2006 5:23:16 AM

Barry Bonds has fans? Who?

2/20/2006 10:32:12 AM

Buy the monthly baseball card magazine "The Beckett" it will answer all your questions....

2/21/2006 8:40:06 PM

That would be "Beckett" magazine

2/21/2006 9:04:31 PM

i'm suprised he didn't go "the beckett's"

2/21/2006 9:30:42 PM

Beckett ruled my world for about 5 years, my card collection is insane, along with the amount of money spent on it

3/1/2006 12:09:35 PM

It's not worth anything unless you sell it . . .

3/1/2006 12:59:24 PM

^^ no kidding! I would have been one rich middle schooler if I hadn't of spent all my allowance on basketball and baseball cards.

I made like $350.00 last year though selling older (early 90ish) insert cards on ebay. Complete subsets generally sell pretty well.

[Edited on March 1, 2006 at 4:33 PM. Reason : ]

3/1/2006 4:33:23 PM

Quote :

"Any male that grew up in the late 1980's-early 1990's knows all about the phenomenon known as "Baseball Card Death." See http://www.baseballcarddeath.com soon as it is under construction.... The problem is, he doesn't know that he knows this. And who can blame one's selective memory loss here. Do you really want to be reminded of the colossal investment mistakes you made? Well, I'll play the role of Alanis Morrisette, "And I'm here to remind you..." Haha. In the early 1990s baseball cards were better than money, better than gold, hell, they were supposed to pay for college tuitions because they were such a solid investment. As everyone knows, but few can bear to admit, nothing could have been more far from the awful truth...... It's the late 1980-s early 90s. ...Remember this disaster? Look at this mess. Ultra, Minis, Special, Collect-A-Books, what happened to my simple Topps baseball cards? To say the market was flooded would be a severe understatement. I recall in the late 1980s the Topps wax packs would retail for 40 cents, which creeped up to 45 cents, then to 50 cents by the early 90s. Then all of these "special edition" and "premium" cards started to appear at the cost of over $1.50 per pack, and most of them only contained about 15 cards. But fools that we were, we kept on buying them, because they were AN INVESTMENT. Shoeboxes, basements, floppy disks, attics, studios, closets, and spare bedrooms consumed with collections of cardboard squares of players who would be obsolete within 5 years. "Rated Rookies" and "Future Stars" who never played more than 30 games in the Majors. "#1 Draft Picks" out of college and high school who never sniffed the dirt on a Triple AAA field let alone in the Majors. Promises broken, and trust betrayed. "He's still mad at me. He thinks I threw away his baseball cards," says one exasperated mom. " 'They'd be worth millions now.' I'm quoting him: 'Millions now.' " Are you kidding me? "Worth millions now?". Granted, pre-1980s cards are worth much more than the overflooded examples we talked about earlier. But everything has to be either in pristine condition, or ridiculously rare for a collector to even think about buying the damn thing from you. Seriously now...put the Beckett Price Guide away, and actually go out there and try to sell these "precious" cards. Try contacting a dealer who touts on his website "We buy unopened packs, sets of all baseball cards!" like I did. Here is what transpired in my note to them: "Hello. I have a number of unopened, some sealed, sets of early 1990s cards. Fleer, Donruss, Upper Deck, Topps, etc. Additionally I have some oddballs like "Traded Series", Collect A Books, and some others that have never been opened. What is the protocol for doing business? I'm located in XYZ City, and would be happy to send pictures. Thanks" Response: "Hi there. We only buy vintage cards pre 1970. Thanks for thinking of us." UNREAL. Even professional dealers aren't interested in the thousands of cards I carefully wasted time filing away as a kid, and to think of all of the Sundays I pissed away at "card shows." How many Hiltons and Holiday Inns do you see in your neighborhood these days with signs advertising "Baseball Card Show This Weekend"? Does the number in your head resemble a doughnut? If it did, then you just read my mind. For the "dealer" to not even offer a bid for my cards, indicates that they are WORTHLESS. Further proof in this matter lies with Ebay, the famed online auctioneer. I've run a number of 7 day auctions recently for sealed, unopened, SETS of cards. I'm not talking about a random assortment of loose cards. For instance, the 1990 Upper Deck, Fleer, and Donruss sets were all offered individually, for a starting bid of 49 cents! NOT ONE bid, over a 7 day period! Not one! I actually lost money listing these pigs because Ebay nails you with a listing fee for each auction you participate in. If this doesn't drive the "Waste of time, money and effort" point home to you card aficionados, I don't know what will. hose taking the "hold" approach with respect to their collections are simply kidding themselves. Think of it in this perspective. The cards that you have from the 1980s and 1990s were once considered valuable....well according to prices that you PAID for the cards and quoted prices in publications like Beckett they were. How many of you actually sold your cards for those same quoted prices? Hey i'm not ridiculing anyone, I didn't sell one! And now I'm left with the massive basement clearance sale that I can't even get off the goddamn ground. 1. For the market to "bounce back", baseball itself first needs to be revitalized among the youth of today. Do you see it happening? And if the answer is yes, then the baseball card market needs to re-invent itself somehow. The last time I checked kids were buying the new X-Box and asking for I-Pod Nanos for Christmas. And these kids are roughly the same age as I was during my "baseball card phase." Baseball cards will never overtake today's affordable, and easily obtained technological gadgets. And why would they? Think about the probability of is this happening. Secondly, the people who drove up the prices in the early 90s were young kids (who are in their twenties now) and old men (and probably some hideous women too) who ran the "Card and Hobby Shops." The inventories of these "kids" grew over the years as they purchased packs, attended card shows, etc. and these consumers were mostly "buyers." The buyers kept taking in inventory, and the shopkeepers were sellers. Now any shopkeeper who made a sale and refused to replenish that inventory probably made out quite well. But those who thought the boom would last forever likely got their ass handed to them. Just put it in perspective. Upper Deck cards were the hottest thing around in 1989-1991, with Griffey Jr. cards (now what a disappointment he turned out to be, remember all of the hype??) commanding hundreds of dollars. Today, I cannot even sell a sealed, mint SET of the cards from that year for 49 cents. The word depreciation doesn't fit this scenario, its more like a momentous dive. 2. For the card market to rebound, there needs to be a resurgence of interest. This resurgence can't possibly come from those who are already stockpiling cards in hopes that their prices will bounce back. New buyers, new aficionados need to enter the market. Please get back to me if you can argue logically that these items will rebound to late 80s-early 90s mania prices. 3. Statistical records are obliterated routinely and rather easily these days. Remember when Jose Canseco's "40-40 club" was a big deal? No one even gives a shit about that anymore. How about the infamous late 1980s Topps "30-30 Club" member cards? Howard Johnson being one of the "esteemed" members. Do young baseball fans today even know who the hell Hojo is? My point is that records are broken year after year, and the juiced baseball really helps this. Jesse Barfield.... (note NOT in the Hall of Fame, and who the hell even remembers him at this point) hit something like 49 homers in the late 80s. This was considered a TON back then. As we now know, today's "superior" ballplayers can hit well more, hell, even shortstops can crank 40 like it's no one's business. So the value that is built into cards as the player breaks or sets new records, diminishes as his record is broken in future years and he gradually fades into obscurity. "

[Edited on March 1, 2006 at 4:48 PM. Reason : a]

3/1/2006 4:47:19 PM

My dad has two of these, mint condition, in a safety deposit box.

They were valued at $1800 each years ago by an appraiser.

3/1/2006 5:03:38 PM

i have a '64 topps mickey mantle

what's that worth

3/1/2006 5:31:21 PM

i've got a few of these...i'll probably trash them since they're so old

3/1/2006 5:48:48 PM

You can put them in my trashcan if you like.

3/1/2006 9:51:57 PM

i have that '64 Mantle as well

also have a Joe Morgan rookie and a '55 Duke Snider

3/1/2006 9:55:55 PM

Quote :

"Upper Deck cards were the hottest thing around in 1989-1991, with Griffey Jr. cards (now what a disappointment he turned out to be, remember all of the hype??) commanding hundreds of dollars. Today, I cannot even sell a sealed, mint SET of the cards from that year for 49 cents."

I know the writer is not talking about a sealed 1989 Upper Deck set not getting a starting bid of 49 cents. That's untrue.

http://cgi.ebay.com/1989-Upper-Deck-Factory-Sealed-Baseball-Card-Set_W0QQitemZ8772129852QQcategoryZ56114QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

It doesn't command what it once did (I paid maybe 70 bucks for one 10-12 years ago), but I guess it could get there when the auction ends.

3/1/2006 10:27:34 PM

i have a full 88 topps set with both the al leiter error card AND the correct card

3/2/2006 3:20:15 AM

anyone remember the billy ripken "fuck face" card? lol classic

3/3/2006 12:09:54 PM

3/3/2006 3:14:28 PM

GO BIRDS!

3/3/2006 3:14:55 PM