How many collections lay dormant?

[steve B]

Yes, lots of stuff out there that's in unknown collections.

A bit over a year ago I picked up a few cards from a collection. The main part of the collection was modern, but with a bunch of nice stuff. Too much for me to buy, but I got a few things for helping sort the stuff and setting the owner up with an appropiate local auction.

One of the things was a tiny collection that had apparently been bought and never sorted or checked. A few E94s a few T206s mixed up in a small paper bag with a bunch of nonsports cards of varying condition. One of those was an unlisted T49.

There's lots of stuff out there, even hidden in fairly active collections.

Steve B

[deadballera]

"unknown" might be a challenging



there are collectors that choose to collect only raw material

there are owners that do not know what they have sitting in the "attic"

Myself....I have a hundreds of "RAW" cards before WWII. Tobacco's, Goudey's, Caramels, etc. I have only sent in one card to be graded that I later consigned to an auction house.

I do not get them graded because of the cost. At some point, I would love to them graded. But for now...I can feel and smell the goodness of our hobby

[photo111]

I would hope that there are people who collect that do not care about grade, "low pop" or value. They collect because they enjoy it. A part of me hopes that these collections stay hidden, in the family, as part of the family. I don't know, maybe I just wish for a time that maybe didn't exist.

M. penz

[FrankWakefield]

I'm with Michael. I enjoy collecting because of the history of the game, the players, and the cards. The value actually gets in the way. Value makes it more difficult to obtain certain cards I want, and when a card I have can be sold for a bunch of dollars then it doesn't make sense to me to have that much money tied up in that piece of cardboard.

I'm not certain the question has been addressed, or maybe it was not well phrased. I believe there are 'dormant' collections out there; ones that are in a few boxes in a dresser drawer or attic, that haven't been disturbed for 30 or 40 years.

Separate from that, I'm certain that there are old collections out there that are 'active', but are outside the sphere that some of us see... There are old collectors who don't know about or care about Net54, about eBay, about the big auctions... some of them probably don't do the internet or email. I don't doubt they still write letters and trade cards through the mail. Those collections aren't 'dormant'; they are off of the radar of many of us.

[DanP]

A couple of years ago my friends father asked me to help him sell his cards. They were in his basement for years. As first I thought it was a waste of time, but in the middle of some 1970's cards I found a 1914 Mathewson CJ. I spent a week looking through over 100,000 cards. I found some other nice cards like a Connie Mack OJ (I sold some of his cards on N54).

More than 20 years ago (before I got back into collecting) a electrician friend of mine said he opened an old chest in an attic of a house he was working at (yes, he shouldn't have) in Waterbury, CT. The lady was in her 90's. The chest was full of baseball cards. I asked him what kind of cards, he said "I don't think any of them were worth anything they were not standard size and mostly black and white). I always wondered what the cards were and what happened to them!! They weren't cards from the 50's or later because they would have recognized them.

There has to be plenty more people out there like these two!!!

Dan

[B O'Brien]

A fellow I know rebuilds houses in New Orleans and I was walking through one of places last summer. I told him to give me a call if he ever found any cards, and said that he had just tossed out a few hundred Coupons found in one his places in the Irish Channel. That one was pretty much a fluke, because that is one of the few elevated places in the city. A family member passed down two beater houses after a death and the new owner just sold them both as is. My buddy just wanted to do quick rebuilds on the places, so never even thinks about taking the time to part out the houses and see what is inside, dumpster crews can wreck a house in a matter of hours without ever taking the time to see what is there.

I sure made me sad, but I did get a nice desk out of his last place!

I would think this happens a lot around the country. I know movie poster hunters check old houses because they were used as insulation from time to time!

Hope all is well,
Bob

[triwak]

I asked him what kind of cards, he said "I don't think any of them were worth anything they were not standard size and mostly black and white).

OMG, that is SO frustrating! People have been so conditioned by Topps and other modern card companies, as to what a "baseball card" is supposed to look like. It's a constant vigil trying to educate folks about all the cool stuff that came before 1948! Keep the faith...

[barrysloate]

Maybe he had a trunkful of E107. They're black and white.