Selling Baseball Card Collection?

[Deleted]

So I bought and am moving into a new house. I've got boxes and boxes, and binders and binders of old baseball cards. Tons. While I have room in the new house for them, I think its time to cut the cord and say goodbye. I haven't looked at these things since about 1994 and think whatever proceeds I could get from their sale would be better spent on the house.

I'm assuming I should have the whole sha-bang-a-bang appraised before I go to some card store and sell it all. We have one locally that is actually pretty big in the national card scene, but I assume they'd low-ball me on the prices.

Any suggestions on what route I should take? Should I hold on to them and wait another decade or so? Little help?

[JohnJacquesLayup]

If you're ready to get rid of them, I would get a copy of the latest Beckett baseball card guide, and look up the values of the cards you feel have the most value. For maybe the top 10% of your cards, I would try ebay as you may get a better price there than a store that needs to make a profit off the cards. This can also go for any complete sets. I've got a few boxes of complete sets from around 1990 that must be worth something decent as a set.

For the rest of the cards, they may not have much value and I don't know if there would be anything worth your time to do with them. Maybe set up a table at a yard sale and sell random assortments of the cards, like 50 for a $1 or something? Let's be honest, would you really be missing it if your Chito Martinez rookie card slipped into one of these "50 cards for a $1" packs?

[Deleted]

johnjacqueslayup said:

If you're ready to get rid of them, I would get a copy of the latest Beckett baseball card guide, and look up the values of the cards you feel have the most value. For maybe the top 10% of your cards, I would try ebay as you may get a better price there than a store that needs to make a profit off the cards. This can also go for any complete sets. I've got a few boxes of complete sets from around 1990 that must be worth something decent as a set.

For the rest of the cards, they may not have much value and I don't know if there would be anything worth your time to do with them. Maybe set up a table at a yard sale and sell random assortments of the cards, like 50 for a $1 or something? Let's be honest, would you really be missing it if your Chito Martinez rookie card slipped into one of these "50 cards for a $1" packs?

No... but I better not let my Razor Shines rookie slip away!

[Boz]

I'm not sure this will help but I have a comic/graphic novel collection which is about 20 years old (fairly young in comics terms). I haven't sold them, but I did get them appraised a while back.

(yes, yes, what a surprise; the big loser who doesn't have a girlfriend has a comic book collection; go ahead, make your jokes; ha, ha, ha, laugh at the freak)

Most comic book stores, including the one I went to, will offer appraisals of other collectibles, including baseball or sports cards. The one I went to did it for free (several boxes), but I don't know if that's common practice or not. You can also get them appriased at trade shows if there are any coming up in your area.

You can do your own appraisals with a price guide, but you may not know the condition of the card accurately: www.beckett.com


Just as long as you don't have a film reel labeled "Alternate Ending: Luke's Father is Chewbacca." I hear that's only worth five dollars or so.

And Princess Leia's anti-jiggle breast tape isn't worth much either.

[hoyatables]

Another approach is to just look at what the going price is on EBay for a full set of each type (full sets or runs can often command a decent price considering most of it is junk). At the very least, it can give you a baseline price for going to a dealer. Selling full runs can sometimes work well when it comes to comics, not sure how it works for cards.

[Deleted]

boz1 said:

Just as long as you don't have a film reel labeled "Alternate Ending: Luke's Father is Chewbacca." I hear that's only worth five dollars or so.

The dusty film reel I have is actually labeled "Alternate Ending: Chewbacca is Rosebud." That worth anything?

[hoyatables]

boz1 said:

I'm not sure this will help but I have a comic/graphic novel collection which is about 20 years old (fairly young in comics terms). I haven't sold them, but I did get them appraised a while back.

(yes, yes, what a surprise; the big loser who doesn't have a girlfriend has a comic book collection; go ahead, make your jokes; ha, ha, ha, laugh at the freak)

Most comic book stores, including the one I went to, will offer appraisals of other collectibles, including baseball or sports cards. The one I went to did it for free (several boxes), but I don't know if that's common practice or not. You can also get them appriased at trade shows if there are any coming up in your area.

You can do your own appraisals with a price guide, but you may not know the condition of the card accurately: www.beckett.com


Just as long as you don't have a film reel labeled "Alternate Ending: Luke's Father is Chewbacca." I hear that's only worth five dollars or so.

And Princess Leia's anti-jiggle breast tape isn't worth much either.

No mocking here -- far from it. You are in good company.

[AustinHoya03]

I picked up a Beckett in a bookstore a year or two ago, and found that in general, cards are worth about 1/10th of what they were in 1989, which was the year I blew all my allowance, birthday money, and savings at the card shop. It's difficult to put a price on memories, but I decided if I couldn't get at least three good steak dinners out of mine I would hold onto them. (Plus, I wasn't prepared to part with my Barry Bonds rookie card for two bucks.)

[hifigator]

Items like this are really difficult to evaluate. The value comes from a number of factors, some of which will change, while others will not. Additionally the change can be in either direction.

For the most part, the cards prior to '87 should hold their value. From 88 to about 93, the market changed dramatically. By and large, cards were overproduced, meaning that there are simply way too many of them out there from that period. As some card values skyrocketed, the market "grew" ... if you can call it that. Tons of people who had zero interest in the industry tried to make a buck. THe card companies like Topps, Donruss, Upper Deck and Classic, responded by overproducing the products tremendously. The point in this is that cards from that era are especially volatile in the wrong way. In other words, I guess it is still possible that someone from that era gets tremendously popular or does something eternally memorable, but for the most part whatever value comes from that era is reflected by the current values and in my opinion is more likely to drop than increase over time when compared to earlier cards of similar worth.

The one real exception that I can think of is the Bowman set from 1992. After horrendous sales of cards that were overproduced by ungodly proportions in previous years, Topps cut the production of Bowman to only meet initial interest. As suck it took a while before people realized how scarce the product really was. The set features rookie cards of players like Manny Ramirez, Chipper Jones, Carlos Delgado and Mike Piazza. It also has somewhat rarer cards of players like Nolan Ryan and Frank Thomas. The bottom line is that that set has held its value and I think will continue to do so. Aside from that, most of the regular cards from that era are not going to appreciate.

The other element from that period that has ruined the industry in my opinion, is the abundance of insert cards. It basically became a form of gambling. The chance to pull a card that is "worth" $100 or $200 or even thousands of dollars immediately, forever changed the industry. I am not sure if it "started" with Topps "Finest" product line, but they were certainly a major factor. To begin with, they limited production to ridiculously low numbers. Then they jacked the retail price up to begin with. Then they offered a "refractor" version of each card, inserted at a rate of one card per box. When people calculated the numbers, it worked out to something like only 280 of each refractor card in the very first issue. Since then game worn jersies, gloves and bats have found their way onto baseball cards. I know I have gotten a bit off subject here ... sorry.

The point is that cards from that era are by and large going to drop over time, or at least appreciate at a slower rate than cards from earlier eras, aside from the handful of exotic and rare finds.

So if the collection is from that generation, I would suggest selling and as others mentioned, I would start with a Beckett pricebook and pull out the most valuable cards. I would then try to sell them individually on ebay or similar. Packaging the others together as "commons" in packs of 50 is also a good idea. At garage sales/flea markets etc.... it is fairly easy to sell those little packages for 75 cents or a buck a piece.


Lastly, there are a few exceptions from that period. The "Score" football cards had several very limited issues, which have held their value. The 89 football set features rookie cards of Aikman and Irvin among others. The 90 Score Supplemental has the "official" Emmitt Smith rookie card, and like I mentioned, the 92 Bowman baseball card set is a solid product.

I hope this long winded reply helps....

[hoyatables]

Good post, HiFi.

Most collectible markets have phases like this. The true value really is its subjective and sentimental value to the purchaser/owner.

[SDHoya]

My Tony Gwynn rookie will always be the star of my collection. I don't really care what the monetary value is.

[hifigator]

Thank you sir. Needless to say, I was a little too interested in cards during that period. I remember something my dad said during that era. He said that this "card thing is kind of like playing the lottery ... except that if you do win, you get an IOU."

There was certainly some truth behind that saying.

[hifigator]

Buff, one more thing I meant to mention: if you aren't in the position where you "need" to get rid of them right away, either for money, the space, etc... then one thing that I would suggest is to spend some of your down time sorting the cards out differently than most. I use to always pull out any cards of former Seminole players and then sell or trade them whenever I would go to Tallahassee for some reason. That is a good way to get a more fair value out of them. So if you are willing to put in the effort, I bet you could do something similar on a larger scale. Pull out all cards of players from Boston College and take them with you the next time you go to Boston. The same goes for Pittsburgh, Michigan etc... Granted it will take some time and you may never visit Mississippi State University, but I think you see my point.

[JohnJacquesLayup]

So what are peoples best cards???

My '89 Upper Deck Griffey Jr. rookie (although I have his rookie card from each major brand) is up there with my '82 Topps Ripken Jr. rookie. That's a funny card since it is the "Baltimore Orioles Future Stars" card with Ripken Jr., Bob Bonner, and Jeff Schneider. And yes, I had to google that.

[hifigator]

johnjacqueslayup said:

So what are peoples best cards???

My '89 Upper Deck Griffey Jr. rookie (although I have his rookie card from each major brand) is up there with my '82 Topps Ripken Jr. rookie. That's a funny card since it is the "Baltimore Orioles Future Stars" card with Ripken Jr., Bob Bonner, and Jeff Schneider. And yes, I had to google that.

My best cards would include Topps Walter Payton rookie card (76 I think) as well as a bunch of Steeler rookie cards: Swann, Stallworth, Mean Joe Green and Franco's second year card. For some reason I don't have Bradshaw's. I do have a pretty rare hoops card. I have the 80-81 Topps card that features Larry Bird and Magic Johnsons' rookie card with Julius Erving in between them. For that one year, instead of having one player per card, each card had 3 panels which were perforated. So a lot of the cards got torn in thirds. The idea didn't go over very well, but it did create some scarcity for sure. In any case, by doing it that way, there isn't "one" card per player. Each player is on several different cards with different other players. Fortunately for me I have the most valuable one. The last time I looked it was about $500. That's not bad when you have Bird and Magic as rookies on one card with Dr. J. between them.

I also have very rare pormotional card from Upper Deck that featured 6 top rookies from one year. It has Shaq, Zo, Tom Gugliotta, Harold Miner and 2 other guys I don't remember. It is individually numbered to 850.

[SirSaxa]

Buffalo, you answered your own question:

"...hold on to them and wait another decade or so?"

What is your hurry.
Once they are gone, they will never come back.

[TigerHoya]

My grandmother threw out all my mom's cards when she went to college. She was a huge Yankees fan and included in those were the Mantle rookie.

My wife says her grandmother did the same thing with all her dad's cards when he was away at trade school.

The best card I still have is a Rickey Henderson rookie that's not in mint.

I agree with JohnJacquesLayup for how to sell anything you decide to sell.

I've gotten into collecting other things now. The best thing in my collection is a signed and numbered (only 715 were done with the numbered patch on the bottom) commemorative throwback jersey from 1999 (25th Anniversary of the Record) signed by Hank Aaron.

My wife bought it for me at a silent auction at a minor league game when we were engaged.

[tgo]

i have a handful of good rookies, ricky henderson, dave winfield, 4 of the previoulsy mentioned cal ripken future stars, mark mcguire olympic rookie. lots of complete sets from the 80s, topps and score mainly, about 25,000 cards total and about 500 comics all mostly from the 80s and late 70s. i have been wanted to sell off the majority of the collection for a while but never find the time.

do comics have much value? i have a good collection of the various spider man titles and a lot of X-men from the 80s all in great shape stored properly in my garage.

is it worth it to get the good ones appraised and put in those single card cases with the condition printed on it?

[strummer8526]

It's sort of sad what my favorite is. When I was about 12, I shoveled driveways for 2 day to get my hundred some-odd dollars to pick up the Olympic Mark McGwire Rookie. That card is now worth about $40, but that was one of my first purchases that I felt like I bought it myself.

I also really love this 1992 Derek Jeter "Coke" card that I think was like a give-away or something. It's not like a baseball card brand card; it's like a promo thing, but it's the year of Jeter's rookie card.

[hifigator]

tgo said:

i have a handful of good rookies, ricky henderson, dave winfield, 4 of the previoulsy mentioned cal ripken future stars, mark mcguire olympic rookie. lots of complete sets from the 80s, topps and score mainly, about 25,000 cards total and about 500 comics all mostly from the 80s and late 70s. i have been wanted to sell off the majority of the collection for a while but never find the time.

do comics have much value? i have a good collection of the various spider man titles and a lot of X-men from the 80s all in great shape stored properly in my garage.

is it worth it to get the good ones appraised and put in those single card cases with the condition printed on it?

You touch on a great question and one I am asking as well. I read/collected comic books as a kid and have a pretty decent collection. I loved the Silver Surfer growing up, and have almost every comic he has been in. ON one hand, the old comics are only gong to get more and more scarce as some issues get lost or destroyed. But I can't help but think that the popularity of the character could easily decline. In the case of the Surfer, his popularity is fairly high right now because of the Fantastic Four movie. But as other characters flow into the mainstream or evern God-forbid, the writers at Marvel decide to kill off the Surfer, how will the older comics hold their value? I just can't help but think that at some point the newer generation won't even know who he is/was. And at that point does the value drop because of less interest or does it hold steady or even climb because of the scarcity?

I don't know for sure.