I have a problem, and i know someone out there can help me. My father has a baseball card collection in the area of 50,000 cards, and he decided that he wants me to sell them. My problem is, i found out that one does not go to the local baseball card store and drop them off. Does anyone know how to sell these things? I wouldn’t be so worried, but do you know how much room these cards are taking up in my appartment? I think i would rather have the groundhog problem! At least that poor guy had room to move! If anyone out there has any ideas, please, help me get rid of them before they fall over and i get trapped in here!
My guess is that you’d need to find some sort of brokerage firm or something that deals with these things in mass. They’d probably offer you one lump sum that may not be worth the individual parts of the set, but your only other option is to catalogue the whole set and sell off the cards worth anything and toss the rest.
I think Jophiel has a good idea. Also, if you live in a large metro area with a decent number of card collectors, you could try a local auction house as well and put them on the block.
Jeeze, 50,000 cards. I would imagine that even if there are no “super-rarities” in there (Willie Mays Rookie Card, etc.) you’re still probably talking about $10,000 - $50,000, yes?
Time is probably on your side - you will proabably make much more money by cataloging them (as per Jophiel) and selling them piecemeal, although at much more effort on your part.
You won’t get much for 50,000 undifferentiated, uncataloged cards. You have to pick out the highlights and try to sell them at a premium.
You would probably be well-served to get a Beckett’s Guide and try to sort the cards into complete annual sets. If you have complete sets of cards (in good condition) from the era when the cards were released in series (as they were before the late 1970s), you can get a lot for them.
An alternative is to find the Hall of Fame players and find their rookie cards, which are usually the most valuable.
I had a similar situation, though one order of magnitude smaller, back in the late '70s, before the big boom in baseball cards. I contacted a dealer. He asked me to put them in bundles of 100 for easy counting. He came over and made an estimate of quality. (I was a kid, so these weren’t mint.) I may have had them organized by year, but I doubt I went through the trouble of ordering them in numeric sequence. I did not pull out any special value cards for him (though, as we went through the decks, we did remark on a few of potential value). At the end of the exercise, he offered me a lump sum that came out to 5 cents a card – not a bad return on investment (I paid 1 cent per card in amassing the treasures).
He told me that if I wanted to make real money, the way to do it would be to organize the collection and sell it off, card-by-card, at card shows. More time and effort than I was willing to expend.
The upshot of the story, though, is I cannot walk into a card shop anymore. I see the cards I used to have now going for $50, $100 and more apiece, and I think, I could have bought a house by now. Or at least a real nice car. A collection of 50,000 cards which (I assume) dates back into the '50s, maybe the '40s? My mouth is watering like Homer Simpson. It probably would be worth your time to at least look for the Hall of Famers and try to get top dollar for those.
Others still active in the card trade could probably offer more current advice.
I’ve wondered the same thing. I have about 5,000 cards, mostly common cards, but I’ve got quite a few good cards. My uncle gave me all his doubles, and they’re pretty cool…I’ve got 2 Willie Mays, a Hank Aaron, Don Drysdale, etc. I also have a ton of cards from 86, 87, 88 when I was collecting big time…I bet some of those are now worth about $20, and they’re in great shape (put them straight into an album). I catalogued my best 100 cards, and in 1991, they were worth $1000…probably closer to $1500 now. I could use that cash. My '59 Willie Mays All-Star is worth about $130. That same uncle has a 56 Mantle in mint condition. Not the biggie, but it’s still worth nearly $1000.
I went to ebay before & looked at those for sale with my brother. I was laughing because people were getting a few dollars for really expensive cards. Big card lots were going for a few cents on the dollar. Probably because people don’t know if your cards are real.
The best way to go would be to at least organize them by year and then pick up a beckett at a card shop or show. more than likely though your father has them sorted at least somewhat. I know my collection is at least sorted by year. the further back you go the better off you are in terms of money, but you might have a problem getting rid of stuff that is too old and expensive because not many people want them.
I would not sell them all in one lump sum as you will not get as much for it. yeah for that many cards it’ll be a real pain in the ass, but it might be worth it. why not post a couple of years that you have so we can tell what you may or may not have. you might also have complete sets which would be easier to sell as well. and if you have enough good cards then you can have you’re own table at a show and make more money.
or you might be able to convince someone from around here to look them over for you. but a Beckett is the best way to start out. and don’t forget to ask your father what he has if he can remember.
To tell you the truth, I’m not sure of how to get rid of all these cards, but I have a question. Anywhere in this massive collection do you have a Roberto Clemente card, my father has been unable to acquire one, and I would greatly like to get him one for his birthday(upcoming). E-mail if you do please.
wow! Thanks to everybody…This is the deal on the order of the cards, and it isn’t good. They were mostly bought from people selling boxes of cards, such as former collectors. They all came in these white boxes that are fairly large and have two rows of cards in them. I have about thirty to fourty of them. After that, the rest are all in countertop display boxes or other such boxes. My father never put them in any dicernable order. He would go through each box, looking up the value of a card if he remembered hearing the player’s name before, then he would put the box away. He doesn’t remember anything about dates of the cards or any type of order he put them in. He did say that he might have quite a few valuable cards, such as a Mcguire or Sosa rookie card, as well as a bunch of older players from the Yankees, but nothing like a Babe Ruth card. The good news is that the cards are all in pretty good order. They are all straight with no bends or creases, and all have been kept safe. There are about a thousand or two in albums, but given the rate he was buying cards, he couldn’t keep up with himself. As far as a Roberto Clemente card, I have no idea, but if i come accross one, i will let you know. Is there any way to let someone appraise them? i am scared to even look at them, i know virtualy nothing about baseball cards. Hey, does anyone know someone who might want to open a card store? I have thier potential stock sitting here!
joe
If selling them gets to be too big of a hassle, check out Beckett’s Cards for Kids deal. You donate the cards to a local kids’ charity and the agency (hopefully, honest types) will pass them out to sick and terminally ill children. This was you can at least write them off as a charitable donation AND make some sick kids happy.
That’s what I’m going to end up doing with my over-20,000 card collection.
Try ebay. I only need about 3 cards to complete my set of all of his cards (I’m guessing around 40) made between 1955 and 1973 (not interested in all the new re-prints). You can pick up some great deals. I have bought about 10-12 Clementes off of ebay in the last 2 months.
If you have a specific one you want, I can give you some tips on how much to spend, etc. My email is in my profile.
Why? Those are pretty generic sites and I doubt there’s a conflict of interest - I mean anyone who owns the first two isn’t going to be interested in another couple of thousand bucks. The third site seems like a legit card buying site/service which vibajajo64 joined only minutes ago. Methinks you are too quick on the trigger.
