Value of my huge baseball card collection?
I used to collect baseball cards up until the age of maybe 11. I don’t collect them anymore and its been some years since I’ve even looked at the cards. So, if they’re worth enough, I want to sell them. There are about 5000-8000 cards, all in good condition. Most are from about 1999-2005, some much older. They all came from opening hundreds upon hundreds of upper deck, topps, etc packs of baseball cards. Some were purchased separately. There are tons of valuable, rare cards and even more common cards.
Any baseball card experts/dealers/etc, how much could I get for all of them? Where would be the best place to sell them: a dealer, a baseball card show/store, ebay, craigslist?
Please, don’t answer unless you have some idea as to what your talking about. Don’t throw out a guess answer to get 10 best answer points.
If you want more than a ballpark figure, you have to provide more than ballpark information. You haven’t even given that. ‘Tons of valuable, rare cards’ is pretty meaningless. I have 10 years experience in collecting cards and memoribilia from all sports, and over ten years experience in selling. I have purchased numerous collections, large and small, and not agreed to a deal on many more collections. All of them had to be seen before I could give someone a price. No one here is going to be able to give you an answer about value, at least, not an answer with any credibility.
You will have to estimate the value yourself. Start by identifying exactly what you have. List each year of issue by company/brand/set. List complete sets first. Then list the inserts/special cards. For the commons, just give the count for each set.
Then, search eBay for actual sold prices of sets and inserts. Sales that you see look back two weeks in time. To get a better picture, you’ll have to track things over months, not weeks, because you will not see anywhere near everything you have in a few weeks worth of sales. Be sure to go by the total sale amount including postage, because that is what the buyer was willing to spend. This is important, especially on full sets that are heavy and expensive to ship. Someone may have spent $20 on a set but only paid $10 to the seller because it cost another $10 to ship it. You could sell the same thing for $15 off of eBay and come out ahead.
Once you’ve gotten real numbers for the things you do have, decide if you want to go to the time and trouble of selling on eBay, (and you probably won’t get rid of your commons this way unless you just about give them away), or if you’re willing to take less money – maybe quite a bit less – to unload the entire lot at one time. Craigslist is the best place for this.
A dealer, whether it’s in a store or at a show, will give you a very small percentage of ‘book’ value. You will almost always do better breaking and selling yourself. Most collectors that have lost interest have no desire to do that. You are, in effect, paying the dealer to get rid of your collection for you by selling it very cheap. It has to be worth his time.
Upper Deck 2005 Portraits Baseball Box Break 3/29/07