Old Sports Cards

[P-NutLane]

Does anybody know what the best way to sell my old baseball, football, basketball, hockey, rodeo cards would be?
None of the little shops around here do cards. They are only interested in comic books. My daddy owes his mexican landlord rent, and I have literally a million cards of all kinds of sports. So far Ive struk out in trying to sell them on the computer. If anybody deals with that sort of thing Id be greatful for some advice.

 

[Colonel_Reb]

Try coin shops, as some of them deal in cards too. I knew an awesome dealer in Louisiana, but he died last year. Smoking finally got to him.

 

[dwid]

How old are they? alot of cards from the 80's and 90's are supposedly worthless (what the best card shop closest to me has told me). Something about the companies just mass producing the same card over and over and having a surplus of them. I have a rookie Emmitt Smith card that is worth 3 bucks.
Sorry your dad is having trouble paying rent
you might have to travel to find a decent card shop, the only in my town is interested mainly in comic books, they sell cards but very overpriced (like ten times what their beckett says their worth is) and dont buy them. There is a nice shop an hour away from me. Even then, he is only interested in very rare items and his favorite players.Edited by: dwid

 

[P-NutLane]

Yeah, these shops only want cards from the 20s, and 30s.

 

[sport historian]

To be worth very much, they have to be fairly old. A dealer will only give you half of the list price, if that.

 

[jaxvid]

Try ebay. You can also determine the value of your cards by comparing them to what similar items are selling for. The card market is way down right now as values have plummeted with the recession and a glut on the market.

 

[sport historian]

Aside from ebay, the way to get the best price for cards is to have a table at a sports card show. Or have a dealer let you set at a table with him displaying your cards. A card show is were the buyers will be. The problem is, as others have said, that values are down on objects that appeal to people with "disposable income," like sports cards.

 

[whiteathlete33]

Wow I have lots of baseball cards from the 80's. I thought they were worth something.

 

[sport historian]

I bought a couple of Topps yearly sets in a box and put them in a closet for an investment. Twenty years later, when I thought thay would have a high value, I found that they were practically worthless.

 

[whiteathlete33]

Sports Historian I have tons of 1980's cards. At minumum most should be worth at least 1 dollar a piece? Am I wrong on this one?

 

[Don Wassall]

Sports Historian I have tons of 1980's cards. At minumum most should be worth at least 1 dollar a piece? Am I wrong on this one?

You'd be lucky to get one dollar for a thousand of them. The sports card hobby was ruined by overproduction and greed. '80s and '90s cards will never be worth diddly squat, except for some sets that were printed in low numbers.

P-Nut, unless you have rarities expect to get but a small fraction of what the guidebooks say the cards are worth, even their wholesale value. Dealers always say the market is bad, even when it was booming.

I would try E-Bay, classified ads, and/or Craig's List; forget about dealers. Just don't expect to get very much at all if they are not rare. Virtually everyone interested in cards has worthless stuff from the '80s and '90s, or know enough to only offer very little for it. I went through the same experience trying to sell cards in 1985 then again a few years ago.

 

[P-NutLane]

Thanks Men. I sure am sorry to hear how worthless these things are. Like I said, I have a ton of them. I got mint condition Roger Marris, 61 in 61. Also quite a few 50s ,60s and 70s. Maybe Ill get lucky someday. At least half of them are from the early 80s to the early 90s. Some I have 10 of, and I guess alot of other guys do too. Thanks again brothers.

 

[Don Wassall]

If you have a lot of cards from the '50, '60s and '70s, some could have significant worth, depending on condition, rarity and demand. Many rookie cards and others from those years sell for a lot of dough. You need to have a friend or relative who knows about cards take a look at them and tell you what you have. If you don't know anyone, buy a retail price guide and do it yourself, they're pretty easy to understand. A dealer will only rip you off, especially if he senses you don't know much about what you have.

 

[sport historian]

I have a Topps 87 set in the box. Recently I checked the price guide and found it isn't worth much. I also have a 92 Fleer in the box set and a 91 Stadium Club Archives Set. As Don says, check a retail price guide. You can find them at a magazine stand.

 

[whiteathlete33]

You can even find price guides online.

 

[Don Wassall]

To be more accurate, the baseball cards printed from 1986 through about the mid-'90s are for the most part worthless junk,printed inthe billions. Older ones for the most part have been stagnant to declining in price. Cards from about 1970 and earlier have held value but most aren't likely to rise in price because the number of people interested in them (upper middle class and upper class white men) is a shrinking universe.

In recent years the card companies (the ones that haven't gone out of business that is) have created deliberate scarcities by running limited print runs of issues. The main problem there is that it has driven kids out of the hobby because the packs of cards sell for a ridiculously high price, and most adults aren't interested in them.

Card collecting was meant to be a fun diversion for young boys, but like everything else in this rotten society it was ruined by corporatization and greed. Topps had a great thing going when they put the cards out gradually over seven series. Anticipating when the next series of new cards would start being available at the local drug store wasone of the big attractions of collecting. And the packs cost a nickel for five cards, far far cheaper than now even when accounting for inflation.

Today card collecting is mainly the purview, not of young boys, butof fat middle-aged white guys.

 

[GWTJ]

When I was a kid and bought baseball and football cards, each pack came with a stick of gum. It wasn't the best gum in the world. It had this nasty white powder all over it but what the heck. Well, when baseball card trading became big business the card companies got rid of the gum so card owners could have 'mint condition' cards. Like Don said, the hell with the kids.

 

[white is right]

I was an avid collector. Prices have diminished down to the level they were pre-boom. I remember getting rookies for 1 dollar in the mid eighties and they shot up to about 50 bucks in the early 90's. Now you would be lucky to get about 5 bucks for them on Ebay. The sign that the business was over saturated with dealers and collectors in my city was when Chinese and Vietnamese immigrants were opening shops and they barely knew the sport. Now Toronto might have 2 shops left. About the same amount they had pre-boom.

 

[whiteathlete33]

Well I guess most of my cards are worthless. I am going to go through them though because I am sure I have a few of value.

 

[Don Wassall]

Coincidentally, Iglanced throughan issue of Sports Collectors Digest yesterday for the first time in several years. It's a weekly publication that I subscribed to off and on for a number of years, but hadn't seen one since letting my sub lapse about five years ago.

The changes were startling. It's smaller in size,though that's true of most print publications in recent years. But it had only about 1/5 the number of pages it used to, and the volume of advertising was but 1/10 of what it used to be, if that.

More evidence that a once great hobby has been ruined by greed and speculation. That's also true of most hobbies in America; stamp collecting is dying, as are many niche hobbies such as collecting music boxes. Another factor is that young people aren't interested in hobbies like they used to be, spending much of their spare time playing video games.

 

[Europe]

People should collect things for the fun of it, not the money. You can still collect stamps. Maybe there isn't as much money in it, but if you like to do it for fun, what difference does it make. People at work collect refrigerator magnets from trips people take and they put them on their filing cabinet. They don't do it for the money.
You should collect comic books because you like them, not for an investment.Some people just buy them and stick them in a file without even reading them. What's the fun in that? Some people will collect things that are cat related or whatever.
It seems that many things are worth something now because at the time things were produced nobody thought of them as collectable, like old lunch boxes.

 

[OldSchoolBoy75]

I collect football cards on a sometimes-regular basis. It wasn't until about 1991-92 that cards were coming out of the woodwork, so much so that you couldn't keep up with anything. I think the warning signs came in 1989 when NFL ProSet was introduced. Personally, I think these football cards were way better than what Topps put out that year, and that's saying a lot. I don't think Topps ever recovered after that. I even think 1988 was very blasé in layout. The 1985 cards were so edgy (black with side pictures and the player's surnames in big lettering), and going back a little further, 1980 was also quite a surprise in layout. With Topps, you had one year where the layout was really great and then other years when it was plain and uninteresting.

 

[dwid]

I just got back into collecting cards recently, just for fun, i know there is no profit in them but like having them and it is a cheap hobby that helps keep me sane. When I go to the city I stop by this nice card shop and look for White players.

Found a bunch for really cheap: Patrick Jeffers autographed, Jordy Nelson auto, Danny Woodhead auto, Tom Zbikowski auto, David Kircus, Keith Poole, Kevin Kasper, Luke Staley, Drew Bennett, Mike Furrey, Kevin Curtis, Wes Welker, Kevin Walter, Jacob Hester, Peyton Hillis, Mike Hass etc.. a bunch more for most positions

Still looking for a Jason Sehorn and Eric Weddle. Have a few other db's like John Lynch's rookie but looking for some White cornerbacks that started back in the day. I have quite a few White players for every position but only one cornerback in Dustin Fox who hasnt gotten a fair chance in the NFL.

The guy who runs the place always looks at me like im crazy when i pick out the cards, but hes a nice guy. Ill ask for something weird like a Heath Evans card and the next time i come back he has found 2 of them in his big collection.

So pnutlane, if you have some White cornerbacks I could try to help you out, dont have much money but it would be better than getting nothing for them. Also looking for Ed Mccaffrey.

And waiting to see if the dealer can find Brian Young, one of the best White defensive tackles to play in recent years, guy was really underrated, supposed to come back next year if injuries heal. He was on the line that held Adrian Peterson to 30 something yards, and it was mainly him doing all the dirty work clogging up the lanes and such. He was also good at getting to the qb, better than Sedrick Ellis who Saints fans think is the next Sapp.

Would be nice to pass them down to my kid one day so the players are not forgotten, especially the ones that got screwed over.Edited by: dwid

 

[white is right]

He probably thinks you are filling out sets..

Hey when I was a kid we used to trade for the weirdest baseball players. Al Hrabosky, Biff Pocoroba. Any black player with a huge afro.....

Edited by: white is right

 

[Don Wassall]

Any black player with a huge afro.....

Did you have this card in your collection?