Baseball Cards - What to do with them?

[nurkvinny]

I used to be VERY into baseball cards. When I was about 7-10, I'd spend every penny I had on them. Mostly 86-89 years, almost all Topps. So now, ~20 years later, I am picking them up from my folks house this week.

 

Several complete sets, many in binders, some in hard plastic holders... we're talking 10's of thousands probably. All but a couple are mint.

 

Anyone buy or sell these years cards recently? Better to sell off individually, in groups, or all at once? Took a quick look on ebay, didn't see any collections similar to this one to judge a price.

 

Ideas?

[wnaplay1647545503]

I still have many, many sets. We went several years buying the displays still in boxes. Dealer would take the boxes they were shipped in and turn them inside out and put the boxes of cards in them to make the display. We have several dozen of these never opened. Not only are the cartons they came in that you would see on the shelf but not even the shipping box. Saving them for a rainy day. We have countless rookie cards. Several jordan rookies are claimed to have been in each box. But we never opened to find out. Theres always a card show going on somewhere. Take them to one and talk to a dealer. Or just to a card shop. Drop them off and they will go through them and buy what they want, or tell them you are selling the lot as is. They'll shoot you a price.

[Alex1647545498]

You can get one of those books that tells you the card/collection value.

[morabu]

don't expect a very fair deal on most!

most card stores are there for the sale only, and when they buy they try to ass rape!

[GonneVille]

Go to the main library and read the latest Beckett collector mag, but be prepared for disappointment. Outside of a few choice cards, like Griffey/McGwire/Bonds and a few others, most of the late 80s Topps cards are next to worthless. Topps cranked out their basic sets in the range of 25-30+ MILLION copies of each card. Beckett used to have ads where dealers were trading certain cards in lots of 50/100/500 at a time. The "Traded" and other Special edition sets have some value, because they are somewhat more scarce, maybe 7-8% of the basic set volume, but there really isn't that much demand for them either. Overproduction and the 94 strike pretty well destroyed the market for the 80s cards.