How much should I sell all my baseball cards for?

[Narz]

I am thinking of trying to sell all my baseball cards on eBay. I don't have them with me so I'd have to wait until I went back to my parent's house (might not be 'till Xmas) to assess for sure what I have and post an ad.

I know pretty well what I have though.

A bunch of complete sets :

1986 (Topps, they're all Topps)
1987
1988
1989
1990
1991
1992

and a couple more between '93 and '96 not sure which years

I also have the '86 Topps Traded set and the Fleer Trader (or Rookies or whatever Fleer calls it) set.

I have a few notable valueble cards (I would have more but this little bastard Louis Villinova cleaned me out in '90 and then moved to Florida (I lived in NY growing up).

Anyway the main ones I remember are :

'79 Ozzie Smith rookie (excellent condition)
two copies of the '85 Mark McGwire Olympic rookie (both mint)

Those are the main two I can think of (and the most valueble). I also have a Stan Musiel from pretty early on, oh yeah and a Ricky Henderson (base stealing record holder) rookie and a bunch of other semi-valueble (probably $5 each) cards from the seventies and early 80's.

Also I have a few boxes of probably 2,000 random 80's cards (probably mostly common players) that I wonder if I should even include.

Note to mods : I'm not trying to sell any cards here, just asking for advice on how much I should charge.

Thanks!

 

[Masquerouge]

Well if you sell them on eBay how much you should charge is pretty much irrelevant since you're going to start at $1.00, unless you do not want to go with auctions (or set a reserved price but these things turn people off your stuff).

But in any case, why don't you check for how much these cards go for... on eBay? That should give you a good idea

 

[Red Door]

Hey! I got the '91 Topps set.

 

[Narz]

Well if you sell them on eBay how much you should charge is pretty much irrelevant since you're going to start at $1.00, unless you do not want to go with auctions (or set a reserved price but these things turn people off your stuff).

I could do an aunction AND a "Buy it Now".

But in any case, why don't you check for how much these cards go for... on eBay? That should give you a good idea

I could do that but I was hoping someone here had a price guide or something.

Yes I know, I'm a lazy bastid.

 

[Masquerouge]

I could do an aunction AND a "Buy it Now".

True. I forgot about the buy it now...

I could do that but I was hoping someone here had a price guide or something.

Yes I know, I'm a lazy bastid.

What has this world come to when looking up stuff on the net is too tiresome? BOOT CAMP FOR EVERYBODY!

 

[skadistic]

Sit down for a few hours with a Beckets magazine and price them out.

 

[Narz]

Sit down for a few hours with a Beckets magazine and price them out.

Yeah, that might be what I'll end up doing.

 

[.Shane.]

Sit down for a few hours with a Beckets magazine and price them out.

Except you'll never get anywhere near what Becketts lists.

The easiest way is just research on ebay itself. See if there are any other auctions of the same thing and use that to gauge your price. Any time I have a piece of old junk or equipment, I'll do a quick ebay check just to make sure I'm not throwing away something that could get me an easy $20 or $50 bucks.

Just a quick look tells me they're near worthless. Sorry. I'm somewhat in the same boat as you.

 

[Sanaz]

An aside, since I have absolutely no idea of the value these days...

I sold all my cards back in 1989, because I needed the money. I got maybe $3-4K total, and that was probably about what they were worth (I used to know that kind of thing). However, I now have a kid, and I really wish I had never sold them, especially for a few thousand bucks. For one, they'd be worth quite a few more thousands of dollars now than back then. But more importantly, I'd be able to share part of my childhood with my boy. I know you've said you'd want kids some day, think about this a little before selling. My cards were sitting in well protected boxes/etc. at my parents' house too, so I didn't need to cart them around with me when I lived all over the country. I really only sold them for the money, and because I was done with that part of my life. Anyway, if you do sell them I hope you get what they're worth, but I personally wish I had found an alternate source of cash back then.

 

[Abaddon]

Its not worth it.

eBay buy-it-now dissapear as soon as anyone bids if you dont have a reserve

if you havea reserve it scares off bidders as they know they definitly wont get a complete steal.

DONT sell all your collection in one lot!

sell each complete year seperate
and then whats left as a colection

you get more money this way.


I have traded many tings over ebay, as well as trading card, with over 500 positive feedback, i know what im doing, and that my advice is right.

 

[Esox]

I have a lot of cards from 89-93 myself. Unfortunately the bottom dropped out of the baseball cards market in the early 90s. Too many new cards were out there and the market was flooded. There are still some choice cards, like McGwire, but most of us who held onto our cards are still kicking ourselves.

The poster who sold out in 1989 may actually have done himself a favor, believe it or not, if your cards were from the 1980s (Clemens, McGwire, Mattingly etc). The market that stayed strong is for the much older cards.

 

[downtown]

fact is, they're prob not worth very much at all. After the first sterioid scare, the market for baseball cards totally bombed. At the hight of Sosa/Mcgwire, when we still thought baseball was pure, and the market wasnt flooded with all sorts of "special cards", you could have gotten 2, 3 times more what you can sell them for now.

I'd sell the Mac cards as soon as you can, before more dirt comes up on him. the mid 80's topps collection is also too young to fetch top dollar...the average card from that collection runs around 7 cents I think, last time I checked in my book.

I'd sell the big cards, and wait it out. It doesnt look good to make much money though

 

[amadeus]

Can't you have them appraised at a comic book shop?

 

[Narz]

yeah I should have sold them in '89 or '90, ah well.

rm, I can just look up the prices in a price guide.

 

[The Yankee]

Look through a guide like Beckett's to see some prices for the sets and the rookie cards. I don't think the big books are all that expensive and should set a price, especially if you do not sell at an auction.

 

[Mulholland]

Do people still intrinsically value baseball cards? Haven't they kind of become a sham since they started selling the complete box sets? Maybe I'm just a pessimist but as most professional sports today are only about the money and not the love of the game, I couldn't care less about a card made after 1990. As for that Mark McGuire rookie card I might buy it for TP as I have quite the bug as of late.

 

[The Yankee]

Sure. I do actually, even though I have plenty of box sets. I don't intend to sell and there is still a good portion of my cards that were acquired by buying packs in a small sports card/memorabilia store. It won't stop me from purchasing new items in the future when I have the money, so maybe that does not square with the intrinsic value.

 

[Mulholland]

I guess if you love baseball you love baseball cards. I guess I just kinda lost interest along time ago. Professional sports...grrrahhh!!! Hell, I'm Canadian and I don't even like NHL.

 

[bed_head7]

Do people still intrinsically value baseball cards? Haven't they kind of become a sham since they started selling the complete box sets? Maybe I'm just a pessimist but as most professional sports today are only about the money and not the love of the game, I couldn't care less about a card made after 1990. As for that Mark McGuire rookie card I might buy it for TP as I have quite the bug as of late.

Well, I still value mine. Though I do agree that selling boxed sets, and also the huge explosion in the last decade of brands and special cards kind of took away the novelty. I just remember the excitement of buying boxes of Topps, Donruss, and Fleers boxes from the late 80s and early 90s, breath held as I tore each pack open, hoping for the Ken Griffey Jr. or Greg Maddux or whoever the big rookie was that year (though those two were two of my particular favorites in general). And then once that was done, sorting all of the cards, finding where I had doubles and which ones I was missing and trying to fill the holes by trading with my friends. I did then later get a bit caught up in buying some new stuff for more than it was worth monetarily or in terms of the enjoyment it brought, and am sure that were I try to sell my collection it would net me far less than what I paid.

Hm, now I kind of want to find a nice box and spend a few hours remembering my younger years.

 

[joycem10]

I have a stack of old cards from the late seventies and early eighties that I never sold. I've carted them around with me since high school. I remember hearing that the market crashed back in the nineties and assumed they weren't worth anything anymore. Is that BS or not?