I'm just curious if there are any sports card collectors on BOL land... When I was a kid I used to collect cards and now I have them all in this big wooden crate. Long story short, this weekend I stubbed my toe on the crate (it turned bright purple and swelled up really bad) and I figured it was God's way of telling me that I need to do something with all these friggin cards. I have well over 5000 cards and they're all between 12 and 20 years old. about 80% are football and the rest a mix of basketball hockey and baseball. does anyone know a good place to sell them? I looked on e-bay, but that doesn't seem to attract alot of collectors, and the area around here doesn't seem to have any card shops that'll buy them....

I'm like you.. I have a ton of mainly football/basketball cards as well as countless comics. I have them all sitting in many many many boxes on the top shelve of our storage closet. I too thought about selling them but then figured if I have a son one day he'd get a kick out of all that, so I guess I'll hold out a bit longer.. I've been sitting on them for about 20 years so what's a few more going to hurt =)

I would have said sell them on Ebay but guess not. Maybe local collectors or Craigslist??

i just gave mine all to my kid, the market is so down on all that stuff that it wasn't worth trying to sell. I had some good rookie cards that in the day were worth $30 or $40 but were only worth a couple of dollars now so now they are all basically trash. but I did keep all my garbage pail kids..

Clown, there is a card collectors magazine out there, that lists by Card Issuer (Tops, Flair etc), sport category, year, card and current collector $ value. Give it a shot, then once you determine what a gold mine you are sitting on, find either a sporting card collector show in your area, or do a Google to search for collectors within reasonable distance.

it's called Beckett's and the price you see is 10 times the price you will get if you are lucky. I had a 10 year comic collection according to the price guides it was worth $3-$5k. But when I tried to sell it, none of the comic stores wanted it, because it was all easily acquired stuff. one went so far to offer me $100. I ended up selling it for $300 to a friend just because I didn't want to haul them around any more. The 15 years of X-men alone were worth way more than that.

So you can use Beckett's and just calculate in a large percentage write-off from the stated value in the magazine. I vaguely remember this too, but the last time I looked, it was about 12 years ago.

You might also check with any card shops in your area. My hubby is into card collecting at the moment, anything Pittsburgh and the shop he goes to most often buys from private collectors. Not sure how the pricing goes but you may be a better price there than on Beckett's.

Re-read this and I've been married to that man too long, I know way too much about this stuff now

What about sitting up and selling them at a trades-day; flea market type place. Not sure if you're willing to sit all day in attempts to make a few bucks.

Try the local card shop, that is probably your best bet. You may have a few that are worth some money and they might be willing to take the rest off your hands...otherwise find a 10 year old boy...I am sure he would be willing to take them off your hands, I know my nephews would.

My card collection is being saved for my son. They may not be worth anything by then, but will be worth the memories I have and our discussions to be about how much I love the game. Baseball, that is, not football.

My kid collected cards and always told us what they were worth in Becketts and how much he was going to make, which to date is nothing. Our standard response was they were worth what someone was willing to pay. Sometimes you get lucky, but mostly they are duds in IMHO.

Got bad news for you clownboy, the bottom fell out of the sports card market about 10 years ago. My father is a big collector of all kinds of sports memoribilia (sp?), and the value of his card collection has plummetted since the mid- to late-90s. I would advise you to find the most desirable items and sell them on ebay, then try to get a private buyer for the rest.

Or what I would do is just keep them. Think of how cool those cards are going to be to your grandkids.

I have been collecting since the 60's, mostly baseball cards and other memorabilia. My experience is selling is right at 10% of the Beckett value, assuming you have kept your cards in pristine condition. Ebay is a good way to go if you are willing to take a bargain basement price.

Only other comment is that if your cards are more than 20 years old try to dump them at a local antique auction. I have done this with sometimes great success, much more than I could have gotten on Ebay. But if you cards are from the 90's and up, you are stuck with worthless cards or you have to find a greater sucker.

the card companies went crazy in the late 80's and killed the market.

Call my husband. He still buys football cards on Ebay but he's pretty picky. He took all our important papers out of the safe deposit box to put in a complete 1960 something set that's worth a couple a grand now because of the rookie cards that came out that year. Seriously, I would hang on to them for awhile and wait until interest is high in cards again. It's bound to happen if you wait long enough.