Having a garage sale and I was wondering about how much my baseball cards are worth. I'd sorted them a year ago and it was all late '80s/early '90s. So looking it up last night, apparently this is when the baseball cards manufacturers overloaded on producing way too many and production value wasn't good, killing the value long-term. I imagine most here have that era of cards.

https://lwos.life/2018/03/12/the-junk-wax-era-7-years-of-collecting-that-almost-collapsed-the-hobby/

I put $5 for all my cards and the wood box, doubt it sells. One guy came wanting baseball cards but he wanted pre-1977. I have a set of the full Cincinnati Reds 1990 World Series winners in a sleeve book but I'm keeping that.

[Edited on June 20, 2020 at 12:54 PM. Reason : .]

6/20/2020 12:42:40 PM

Yeah they ain’t worth shit. Unless you’ve got a few rookies (and even then they are so over produced even the best rookies are affordable). I’ve off and on collected cards over the years. The hobby is soooo different now with autograph cards, memorabilia cards, etc, etc. For nostalgia reasons that junk era is super cool to me. But pretty much no value there unless you have a really rare error card something.

6/20/2020 1:13:07 PM

I think I have one sports card that is worth more than the cardstock it's printed on - a 1998 Topps Roundball Royalty refractor Kobe Bryant. For a long time the price was about $5. I should probably sell it now, due to recent events increasing the market price.

6/20/2020 1:16:58 PM

Only cards I have that might be worth anything is the full Maxx sets for the 1988 and 1989 NASCAR Winston Cup seasons.

6/20/2020 1:54:13 PM

I've got a ton of Maxx cards. Last time I looked they weren't worth very much

6/20/2020 2:03:14 PM

^ I thought they might have some value because NASCAR hadn't exploded in popularity yet those 2 years so the printings would be more limited than later years. I tried to find a full set value online and there's widely varying prices for people offering them for sale.

[Edited on June 20, 2020 at 3:42 PM. Reason : .]

6/20/2020 3:39:40 PM

I think by that time they were just printing a bunch of cards for literally anything you could think of. I have multiple sets of desert shield/desert storm cards for fucks sake.

6/20/2020 7:12:51 PM

Yeah there was a time where there was a card for every thing you could think of and every brand/company was making them. I remember having some Yoo Hoo brand baseball cards.

6/20/2020 7:28:54 PM

i recently discovered i have some Yo! MTV Raps cards. If anyone is looking for a Poor Righteous Teachers rookie card hit me up lol

6/24/2020 12:15:32 PM

I was a pretty avid collector of baseball cards in the late 80s/early 90s. I was recently looking through some of my books. I have pages and pages of McGwire/Bo Jackson/Griffey Jr./Kevin Mitchell/Canseco/Mattingly/Boggs/Strawberry. At the time, I remember thinking they were going to be worth SO much money when I was older. I also was able to get some older cards through mail-in offers, and one had a bunch of '81 Fleer cards, including a Rickey Henderson that I think is still worth a little... if it's in good condition. Being a kid, while I tried to keep them "mint", I'm pretty sure I don't have a single-one that would be close to that, keeping them in books, trading them, etc. A friend told me a few years ago that if you plan to sell any, you have to send them to some appraiser who assigns a condition to them, and they basically have to be untouched to be "mint" and worth anything.

oh, and I have a set of Revco cards, among other weird distributors. Maybe the Revco are worth something since they went out of business in the late 90s??

[Edited on June 24, 2020 at 12:26 PM. Reason : ]

6/24/2020 12:24:53 PM

Yeah, if you want to actually sell anything worth more than a couple bucks you'd have to pay to get it graded. I, too, have some 80's Rickey Henderson cards. For some reason I have 6 1986 Topps all-star cards, 2 1983 all-star cards and 4 1986 Topps league leader cards (which are only like 3/4 the size of regular cards). I'm pretty sure I got these much later buying old packs that came with books and shit (mainly because I was born in 1985.)

But yeah anything from most everyone on this site's lifetime isn't really going to be worth much at all and those that are worth something will pretty much have to be in pristine condition to even be worth getting graded.

6/24/2020 12:59:44 PM

I've heard a lot of the cards of the steroid-era players aren't worth a ton, though not sure how much that has to do with steroids

6/24/2020 1:02:09 PM

It's because the card companies were also on steroids and were juicing all the printing presses.

6/24/2020 1:15:06 PM

I have an autographed Tom Gugliotta 1992 Classic Draft Pick card. That shit is PRICELESS.

Also just discovered I have 6 skybox Shawn Kemp rookie cards. This has been a fun lunchtime activity.

[Edited on June 24, 2020 at 1:18 PM. Reason : .]

6/24/2020 1:17:39 PM

^^^ nothing to do with steroids. Everything to do with overproduction.

6/24/2020 6:10:58 PM

Yes, as noted in my juicing the printing presses joke.

6/24/2020 6:20:23 PM

Sorry Justin

Your joke was good

6/24/2020 7:35:01 PM

Sorry, I am blind and thought you pointed to my post. How embarrassing.

6/24/2020 8:06:58 PM

What's interesting to me is that it seems that manufacturers are pumping out more cards than ever, they're just releasing dozens variations of the product at various price points and creating demand by limiting supply. Feels like less of a hobby and an alternative form of 'investing' at this point.

6/27/2020 11:23:54 AM

^ it feels that way to me as well. I’m no economist and no hobby expert either. But it always struck me as wild how they’ll release 5 different versions (or more) of the same card...each one increasing in rarity. But ultimately it’s the same card...just a different color border or whatever. Like, you’ll have a standard base version. Then a black border that’s slightly less common. Then a gold border with a print run of 500, a red border with a 250 print run, blue with 100, chrome with 50, and on and on.

Base cards are still almost totally worthless with the exception of rookie cards. And even then you can buy most players’ rookie topps card for an affordable price even if they’re an all star (some exceptions). The autographs, rare parallels, memorabilia cards, and people hunting for the next big prospect/rookie are what drives the hobby in my opinion. It’s more of a form of gambling than investing...buying a $100 box of cards, unless you’re super lucky, you won’t be able to get your money back on that investment. If you’re actually trying to make money you almost certainly won’t.

6/27/2020 12:53:40 PM

nice feature. thanks for posting!

pretty much parallels with the 90s comics crash and boom, too

6/27/2020 6:36:58 PM

Actually sold my box of cards for $5.

7/3/2020 4:58:23 PM

#winning

7/3/2020 9:36:31 PM