Baseball card lot sale

[stalton]

Back when I was a kid I used to collect baseball cards and would like to sell them now. The vast majority of cards are mid 80s to early 90s. What would the best route be to sell them? Card store, internet, the whole lot or packs? Probably looking 2500ish cards maybe more. Thanks in advance!

[JimH5]

If you have complete sets, I would keep them together. If you have unopened packs or boxes, those might be worth something. Otherwise, I'd pull out the Hall of Famers and consider the rest of them junk.

 

You can check Ebay or COMC.com for an understanding of what they'd be worth. Sadly, yours are from an era when the whole world was awash in baseball cards.

 

Other collectors might think otherwise. Fortunately, online searches will give you a good idea of what you have. Doubtful that a card shop would want them, so you're probably looking at selling them on your own.

[stalton]

Thank you for the tips. Sadly I know most of my cards were bought during the era when card volumes skyrocketed. Have you used COMC?

[JimH5]

I have not used them to buy or sell. But it does seem like a good site for determining market value. They move a lot of stuff through there, so everything from high end graded to commons seems to have a price.

[nodakfan17]

I’ve used COMC. It’s a neat website, but it’s a better option for buyers.

 

You’ll have to ship your cards there and then pay a 25 cent processing fee per card. While your cards are for sale, you’ll be charged 1 cent per card per month for ‘storage.’ Then, if a card finally sells, you’ll pay a 5% commission. I wouldn’t bother sending a card to COMC unless it’s worth more than $1 because you’ll pay at least 50 cents in fees per card.

 

In a nutshell, COMC is a great way to fill holes in your childhood collection, but not a great way to sell your childhood collection.

[reillymcshane]

stalton,

 

A few things for you.

 

1. Baseball cards from the 80s and 90s are usually not worth that much. As you noted, there were just tons and tons of them made, and there are lots of them on the market. However, there are always exceptions. It really depends on the specific set (and that's usually because it has some specific cards that are in high demand). Something like a 1990ish Topps or Fleer or Donruss can often be found for $10-15 for a full set. Unopened sets are usually worth more.

 

I would look on ebay.com to see if you can find some of the same sets you have - and check to see what they have sold for in the past (there's a 'sold items' checkbox to you can click to do this). Again, remember that what someone is asking for isn't what they will get for it.

 

2. If you don't have any full sets, the thing to do is look at individual card pricing and see if you have any specific cards of value.

 

Example, you can use pricing here as a guide: https://www.psacard.com/smrpriceguide/ or here: https://www.tuffstuff.com

 

You can also look at pricing on ebay and comc.com to see what people are asking (again, that doesn't mean what they are getting).

 

Don't necessarily trust these prices, but look at them, and if you see if there are any cards that might be of interest to buyers. The pricey ones tend to be rookie cards for superstars.

 

At this point, the key is to see if you have something that is not only of interest to people - but in good shape. If it looks awesome, you can consider getting it graded (which, of course, costs money to do).

 

An example of this might be Ken Griffey's rookie card. But I wouldn't worry about that kind of thing until you cross that bridge.

 

The quality of the cards was a big eye opener for me. When I grew up (back in the 70s and early 80s), I just wanted to get my cards - fill the sets, etc. I didn't pay attention to the centering or whatever. And I never stored them so they wouldn't get beat up or nicked or whatever. The quality of a card can change the value dramatically.

 

3. I have used comc.com to sell cards. I sent in a little over 500 old cards about two years ago. As noted, it costs 25 cents to send in a card. Add in shipping, and it cost me about $140 to get started.

 

It was all pretty painless, and I appreciated the system.

 

In two years, I've had over $1600 in sales. As I'm not interested in collecting anymore, I just cashed out my money - which costs you 20%. When all is said and done, I made almost $1200 - which was fine with me. I had always said if someone offered me $1000 for my cards I'd sell them all at once - and I pretty much got that. Of course, I spent a lot more time doing this process - but I found it pretty interesting.

 

I still have about 20 cards for sale - but they are not high value items, and if I sell them, great. If not, no big deal.

 

A few things I learned from this process.

 

- At a place like comc.com - as people have noted - unless a card is worth at least as buck or so, it's not worth sending to them, as it costs money to send it to them, and it takes time to sell your cards.

 

- It takes time to sell individual cards. I sold about 60% my cards in the first year - and the rest in the second year. You rare cards tend to go first - then the more common stuff just sort of goes when it goes.

 

- The pricing you see in books and online is often really inflated. Don't expect to get anything close to 'retail' value on things.

 

- The value of things doesn't always have anything to do with age. It's all about how rare something is. Example: in 1972, Topps didn't release their second series of NFL cards in the stores. You could only buy them as a set. My brothers and I bought a set of them - and those were a gold mine for me as these are highly sought after cards. I bet that I sold 20 of those cards for $200-$300 - a big chunk of what I made.

 

As a note, about 60 of my cards produced nearly 1/2 of my sales - about $800.

 

So again, you simply need to look at the cards to see if there's something special about them. Otherwise, the value is limited.

 

- Quality is king. Cards in good shape sell. In fact, comc.com won't accept a lot of newer cards (I think post-1980s) unless they are in near perfect shape. I had a rookie Steve Young card from the USFL that they rejected because the corner was bent (it was only one of about 5 cards - all USFL from 1984-85 - that got rejected). Otherwise, most of mine were pre-1980 cards.

 

- As I noted, there are so many cards from the mid-1980s and onward - it makes them almost impossible to really sell. Here's an example: https://www.comc.com/Cards/Baseball/1992/Topps_-_Base/156/Manny_Ramirez/2015867

 

This is a Manny Ramirez rookie card. If you check the link, there are 94 of this card available to sell. That's brutal. There's no point in trying to sell something like that - it just isn't worth your time and effort.

 

- Baseball cards are the hardest to sell, because so many people collected them compared to football and hockey and basketball. While a lot of people still collect baseball cards - it just means there are more people like you trying to sell them as well - driving down their price.

 

- In the end, if you have some complete sets, and they are in decent shape, you can maybe package them up and offer them on ebay. You likely won't get a lot for them, but again, it depends on the year and set.

 

If you only have singles, you can look at potentially selling them individually, but there's probably not a ton of value.

 

My only other idea is to call a card shop and tell them what you have. They'll probably offer you a couple of bucks for a set - or just ask about a few specific cards that are in of high demand. Otherwise, they don't need thousands of cards that there is limited interest.

 

If you have any questions, feel free to ask. You can even PM me - I'm happy to tell you more about using comc.com or answer whatever questions you have.

[jerichoholicninja]

If you're just looking to get rid of all of them for a couple bucks, rummage sale is the way to go.

 

I don't know anything about the two places listed above but I'd look into them if you want to sell some individually.

 

I have some baseball cards in my eBay store. I went through my collection and pulled out Hall of Famers and rookie cards and looked them up to see if any were worth my time. Really, there's only been 1 or 2 that are worth any effort but I still have a bunch listed for about $5 each. After shipping and fees I make about $1 each.

 

So I guess it really depends, do you want to put in time and effort to maybe make some money or just get rid of them.

[KCBrewerfan34]

Just to echo sentiment, modern autographed cards are VERY popular, player matters. 1970’s and earlier are in very high demand if the cards are centered with no corner dings. Get your cards graded is the bottom line, especially older stars. Giannis Cards are smoking hot right now. That could change with a loss to Boston and losing the MVP to Harden.

 

I’m looking to buy 1970’s baseball and Bowman Chrome autos.

 

 

Happy collecting

[Bikeage77]

I bought my friends collection of about 80,000 cards for $500. I spent a lot of Brewers games just going through box for box and pulling HOFers or Hall of Good stars of the era (Strawberry, Gooden, Posada, Andruw Jones, etc). Then had to sort all of those. I gave the rest to Goodwill and feel bad for the poor guy who buys boxes of 5000 or 8000 just to find out there's nothing in there.

 

I pulled all the Cardinals stars and and about 50 Nolan Ryan cards and sold em to my buddy for $350. I still have thousands of cards for other stars to go. I'm going to sell em all in players lots unless there isn't enough to make it worth while then put em together in team. In the meantime there was a lot of Jeter, Rivera, Griffey, and Bonds in there that are worth submitting to PSA and seeing what I can do from there. But PSA or Beckett is a whole other thread topic, probably.

 

You used to be able to donate cards and get a write off up to $600 before itemizing. But I guess now if you want any kinda tax bonus it has to be something like $15,000. I could easily have said each card is $0.03 each to get to $600, but I figured I couldn't get away with saying each card was worth $.25 and even so, wasn't about to take the time to sort all that out for guys like the Jose Valentins of the world.