Observations from a yard sale - 80s/90s junk cards

[Buythatcard]

This reminds me when I first started selling on eBay and knew very little about the value of cards. I thought I saw this great deal on eBay for boxes of cards. There were 100,000 cards for about $250. I said to myself, that I would sell each card individually and get rich off of this. I bought the cards.

The day of delivery, there was a 16 wheeler parked outside of my house. They started bringing in box after box of cards. Had no room in my house, so I had them laid out in my garage. All I kept thinking, that this is my golden ticket.

I started going thru the boxes and all the cards were from the 90's and early 2000's. I started listing them on eBay and they were not selling. The few that sold, went for a penny. I then realized that this was not a good time period for cards and decided to not sell these.

I started breaking them up into smaller boxes and posted on the bulletin board at work that I was giving out free baseball cards. People started showing up that I never met before at my job. It started to move pretty quick so I posted one box per person. I discovered that some people started sending their coworkers to pick up more boxes for them. That's when I said, no more.

I was still left with about 75,000 cards when I was talking to a friend who happened to be an oncologist at a children's hospital. He said that the kids would love to have some of the cards. That's when I decided to donate the rest of the cards to the hospital. That to me was worth a million dollars.

It also opened up my eyes. I said to myself that if I want to make a little extra cash, then maybe I should try to sell vintage cards. That's what I did and am still doing it for 18 years.

[chalupacollects]

Yep, was at a garage sale a couple of weeks back that advertised 80's-90's cards so took a ride over to see if the guy had any vintage. Stumbled on a conversation with the owner and young fella negotiating price on 10 800 card boxes. As the young fella was chatting on the phone I asked how much per box and he said $50 per. I looked around to follow where this went. Young fella started to tell the owner he is starting a card business with a friend and worked owner down to $35 per box... Owner agreed and young fella was happy to peel off $350 and scoot away. I asked the owner if he new what he had in the boxes and he told me all junk from early 90's mostly and a lot of it was stuck together. Felt bad for the young fella as trying to launch a card business at this time with prices so high, it will be tough to make a dollar...

[puckpaul]

It’s not a lot of money we are talking about here. Honestly, this would be more newsworthy if no one was interested at all.

Those guys might even say it’s foolish to spend $5000 on a beater Cobb of which there are hundreds if not thousands, which you could lose $4900 on someday. What did they spend, $15?

[bobbyw8469]

Good story. I'm with you. Modern doesn't interest me.

Originally Posted by Buythatcard

This reminds me when I first started selling on eBay and knew very little about the value of cards. I thought I saw this great deal on eBay for boxes of cards. There were 100,000 cards for about $250. I said to myself, that I would sell each card individually and get rich off of this. I bought the cards.

The day of delivery, there was a 16 wheeler parked outside of my house. They started bringing in box after box of cards. Had no room in my house, so I had them laid out in my garage. All I kept thinking, that this is my golden ticket.

I started going thru the boxes and all the cards were from the 90's and early 2000's. I started listing them on eBay and they were not selling. The few that sold, went for a penny. I then realized that this was not a good time period for cards and decided to not sell these.

I started breaking them up into smaller boxes and posted on the bulletin board at work that I was giving out free baseball cards. People started showing up that I never met before at my job. It started to move pretty quick so I posted one box per person. I discovered that some people started sending their coworkers to pick up more boxes for them. That's when I said, no more.

I was still left with about 75,000 cards when I was talking to a friend who happened to be an oncologist at a children's hospital. He said that the kids would love to have some of the cards. That's when I decided to donate the rest of the cards to the hospital. That to me was worth a million dollars.

It also opened up my eyes. I said to myself that if I want to make a little extra cash, then maybe I should try to sell vintage cards. That's what I did and am still doing it for 18 years.

[Frankish]

If you enjoy sorting through the cards, I imagine it would possible to make a little profit from lots like that. Of course, it depends how thoroughly picked over the cards were. My very limited experience (buying a couple of boxes to go through with my five year old son) is that they weren't THAT picked over. The obvious big money (admittedly, a relative term here) cards were pulled, but there were plenty of errors or print defects present.

It seems unlikely there would be "major profit" in boxes like these...but, again, that's a relative term. If sorting through cards is something you enjoy in and of itself, then your cost of time is essentially zero, and if you make $50/hour all told that might be great for you. On the other hadn't, if you are a hedge fund manager doing it solely for profit, scouring garage sales each weekend would never really be worth your time (financially) even if you found a $0.05 52T Mantle each month.

Happened to read this thread because a friend of mine is leaving the country and dumping boxes of 88-92 cards. It would never be worth my time from a financial perspective, but I'll probably sort through these with my son to see what we find. Admittedly, these haven't been picked over, so I know there are at least a few desirable cards. We'll just donate the commons to a local kids' organization.

[todeen]

Originally Posted by Buythatcard

I was still left with about 75,000 cards when I was talking to a friend who happened to be an oncologist at a children's hospital. He said that the kids would love to have some of the cards. That's when I decided to donate the rest of the cards to the hospital. That to me was worth a million dollars.

It also opened up my eyes. I said to myself that if I want to make a little extra cash, then maybe I should try to sell vintage cards. That's what I did and am still doing it for 18 years.

I donated 40,000 cards to the YMCA about 2005; told the director to give them away or auction them, I could care less. I left in some big name stars so the kids would be excited to get a card of someone they knew. I was young, a bachelor, and knew I could never unload those cards any other way. I walked away stress free. Now I look back, and I think, "Maybe I'd have liked to have maybe 100 of the cards I gave away." But it's somebody else's problem.