Does anyone know anything about BASEBALL CARD collecting?

all i know is that it is what people with hardly any life do

massive print runs from the mid 80's to the mid 90's...i'm sure there are some good cards in the mix but the bulk of the lot will all be pretty much worthless...best advice is to look on ebay and see what similar lots are going for and try for a similar price...

i used to collect as a kid too. have some great cards from the 60s -90s. they are sitting in a box now

My son and I have a pretty big collection. We have been doing it for the last 4 years. Your best bet is to get a price guide and look them up. Then sell them on e-bay. We buy stuff every week on e-bay. If he has a list of what he has, shoot it over to me I may be interested. We try and only buy graded cards but I will take a look at what he has.

I have some old cards myself, get a current copy of Becket it list the prices of all cards

Most likely not going to get as much as you would imagine as print runs were crazy back then like mentioned before.

Was that the time in history with the most print-run??

My first step is to get a Beckett's guide and go from there.

We then need to catalog everything...

ANY IDEAS?

late 70's until upper deck in 1989 were the biggest runs...upper deck in 1999 was the first semi limited brand and other companies began putting out limited products following that...compared to some of the stuff put out now even the 90's limited runs were large but that is when the limited craze pretty much kicked in...

Here's summa mine...









ADG

baseball cards had their heyday 15 years ago. Just collect what you enjoy & leave bulk buys to store owners.

very little of value came out of the 80's & 90's cards. thats when collecting got big & the big 4 started pumping out mass quantities of cards.

but if you can get 85-86 fleer basketball, thats about all thats got long term value.

Becketts will not get you many places with one exception - it will at very least alert you to which cards by which companies are the key cards to watch out for.

I used to run a comic/card/hobby store during the 90's to 00's. We did a lot in sports cards. Few things you will need to know off the bat.

Book value means shit.

Best quality you will have from a pack assuming basic grading is being used would be VG to NM (very rare to get NM, M is about impossible).

After you have base quality and see value keep in mind that is for that guides (base quality) highest retail price. So for example all cards listed would be assumed to be at VG quality and price listed would be X.XX each in most guides. You need to subtract for lesser quality and almost all are.

Considering the price listed is for maximum retail and maximum private sale. You will be lucky to get 25% of adjusted guide price with a sale to a dealer. You may get up to 50% of adjusted book value in private sales. That is individual cards only. Does not include bulk.

Most dealers will want to just cherry pick your cards. They may offer close to half of adjusted guide or better to throw you off number wise. What happens though is you will get some cash and be left with about 349,500 useless cards out of 350,000.

A bulk deal will not net you as much as piecing the crap out, but then your looking at assembling team sets, yearly sets, rookie hunting, all of that crap.

Truth is, it is all a headache and I am starting to get a migraine even thinking about it and it is not even my issue lol. So glad I got out of that business.

Ill give you $200 site unseen

lol agreed tis why i tried to stay short and sweet on my replies...nice breakdown tho;)

ASM ^ yeah selling to a dealer is like selling to a pawn shop. They need to make $ on top of what they pay. So I understand what you mean by Beckett being more of a pipe dream.

It is a bit worse. They (at least used to) list prices for cards in NM condition as the base. Does anyone have a clue how hard it is to even get a NM card out of a pack? Fuck me if you follow full on grading where you measure the borders, check for proper horizontal and vertical alignment, print quality, sharp edges, and then wear on the card, scratches, and of course corners.

It makes it a pipe dream even for the collectors.

Any more tips?


I can cut you in on 10% of this deal.... msg me prv.

Honestly hell nah!

You can ask questions but fuck no on helping. Nothing personal. I may still have some 100k plus assorted cards or and then some in storage - not counting comics. I cant even dump them on people.

Best bet is attempting a lump sale or cherry pick them all, add back in about 20% of the good cards (30 bucks plus) randomly. So they seem not picked over. Then sell them as a huge lot on craigslist. See if your grandmother will sell them for you if you can, it may help some assuming she can lie and talk a bargain.

Take the remaining good cards and sell those as a lot.

Or make your own online store and live in a level of hell I only wish on my enemies.