Hey, I’ve just gotten the idea of selling my baseball collection from when I was a kid. I don’t use them for anything, and they don’t have a significant sentimental value to me. I probably have over five hundred of them, and I don’t really even know where to begin in trying to sell them. I don’t really follow sports and never really did; I just loved baseball when I was a kid (I’m 21, so being a kid wasn’t really that long ago, these cards are probably about 10-15 years old).
Is there a local card/collectible shop in your area? They might want to buy any valuable ones you have. Alternatively, try eBay. There are people who sell trading cards of all sorts a few hundred at a time, though you probably won’t get a whole lot of money for them.
IMHO, Unless 10-15 yrs ago you made an effort to collect certain cards, particularly rookie cards, and keep them in mint condition, you are SOL.
~15 years ago happens to coincide with a huge boom in card collecting and card production; publications such as Beckett’s baseball card monthly printed increasingly outrageous prices for baseball cards in that era, yet dealers paid typically .25-.50 on their prices, at the most, when there was a demand and they could sell the card.
Children (and adults) with no sense of economics proudly proclaimed that they had amassed thousands of dollars worth of baseball cards. Very few actually managed to turn the cardboard into cold, hard cash, however.
A quick web search shows that Mr. Beckett is still in the baseball card business. You may be able to view completed auctions for cards in your collection on this site or google other collectible sites to get an idea of their “value”.
A quick look at a pricing site & cross reference through the cards you have by number will show whether you have the Billy Ripken “fuckface bat” card or McGwire Olympic rookie card, etc. that may have some decent value.