Yard Sales/Estate Sales?

[Exhibitman]

You just have to decide whether you enjoy spending your time rummaging around a flea market, antiques show, yard sale, etc., or not, with potentially no payoff. I like doing it. Worst case scenario, I figure I get a good 2-3 mile walk in on a weekend morning. Best case, I find something cool or valuable too. As noted above, you got to be first through the door. Fifteen minutes early is two hours late at many of these events. You also have to be ready to pick up whatever is good even if it isn't in your wheelhouse. I've seen people walk away from great deals because the items aren't exactly what they are looking for. It is very competitive. And very, very dusty and dirty work.

[rjackson44]

Lots of vintage toys

[Brownie33]

You never know what you’ll find. However, scoring at a yard or garage sale imo is super rewarding. I love finding cool items after searching and putting in effort. To me, it’s a lot more rewarding than just scrolling through eBay and finding a deal. It depends though what your free time means to you. It’s a big time commitment.

[G1911]

The odds are incredibly low. Pretty much everyone who collected these cards as a kid and don’t know they are worth much money is dead and their collections have already dissolved.

If you collect a breadth of things or post war cards, you can find stuff. Oftentimes that stuff is priced super high. I have a fun time just looking through old cards and talking or poking around stuff, so it can worth it to me, but the odds of 1) finding pre war baseball cards and 2) having them priced on the cheap is very low. An old guy selling his 50’s and 60’s cards at a yard sale is doable, finding T cards is really unlikely. But unlikely isn’t impossible, if you enjoy doing it for other reasons. Otherwise it will be more time and cost effective to just pay market prices online and save the hours and hours that probably won’t yield a single card.


Bargains in the sense of getting a steal from a lazy or uneducated seller is more restricted these days to knowing niche hobby areas and having a monopoly of knowledge in them to leverage that isn’t easily found with a Google search.

[jingram058]

Many cards in my collection came from my nephew who, as he got older, became totally disinterested in them and bequeathed them to me. It was his mother, my wife's sister, who found the majority of his cards at early-morning yard sales (if you weren't first on scene, the good stuff like cards were long gone) and estate sales. This was back in the 1980s/90s. I am told that, as posters above state, the pickings are slim to none now. Everyone nowadays knows these cards are quite valuable. Same with flea markets and antique malls. The days of getting these cards on the cheap like this would definitely appear to be gone forever. Every so often you hear of some pick up like Bender above, but something like that now is exceptionally rare. The only things I see on my occasional flea market and antique mall forays is junk wax and way over priced beaters.

[Schlesinj]

I stopped by my local card shop on Saturday and the owner mention a family brought in several raw T206 Drum to send to PSA.

[obcbobd]

Yes, as mentioned earlier it is slim pickens for the most part, but every now and then you get something by asking if they have any old cards. I've had no luck with pre-war but have gotten a few complete 1970s sets, box of mid 60s card w/ Mantle, Clemente etc and a few autographs just by asking

Good luck

Bob

[isiahfan]

Originally Posted by Exhibitman

You just have to decide whether you enjoy spending your time rummaging around a flea market, antiques show, yard sale, etc., or not, with potentially no payoff. I like doing it. Worst case scenario, I figure I get a good 2-3 mile walk in on a weekend morning. Best case, I find something cool or valuable too. As noted above, you got to be first through the door. Fifteen minutes early is two hours late at many of these events. You also have to be ready to pick up whatever is good even if it isn't in your wheelhouse. I've seen people walk away from great deals because the items aren't exactly what they are looking for. It is very competitive. And very, very dusty and dirty work.

^^^This 100%

I have gotten into estate sales in the last year...if you don't have an in (I don't) it makes it much tougher to get on the lists. If you are not first five or so in...tough pickins...though I have had decent luck with some pre-buys and where it was like American Pickers style...mostly modern 1960s-2020's stuff.

I did see an estate sale in Michigan near Saginaw in August that had ~800-1000 1948-1953 Bowman/Leaf/Topps Football/Baseball/Boxing cards...a true barn find and also a ton of comics...which I know nothing about.

I also love the flea markets and swap meets...get good walks in and a side benefit is that I am known as the "card guy" now amongst many and get clued in first to new stuff. A couple good finds this year....1976 Yankees signed ball with Munson, Hunter, etc.($200)...a box of 1970s clean football with all of the key rookies except WP (1$/each)...Mantle & DiMaggio signed /#'ed lithos ($30 for the pair)....Gretzky Topps RC ($1 - true..this last weekend)....Kobe Topps RC/Iverson Precious Metal RC (Both $.25 each)...David Arias Ortiz Flaie Wave and Cabrera Topps Traded RC ($1/each)....and binder of 1000 Stars and RC from 1978-1987 with a gem 57 Banks and about 100 stars from the late 60's-mid 70's ($150).

A couple of finds I missed out on...a 3200ct box of 1957-1965 Topps baseball in nice condition...filled with some nice stars (Clemente/Mays/Koufax) for $300 and a truck backing up with over 500 unopened wax boxes from 1987-2023 (all sports) For $10-$20 each...DOH!!

Also check Craigslist...I recently was found a free lot of six binders of stars from 1975-1992 and a box of 5 unopened 1983 packs with Gwynn on top and two Star Gwynn auto bags...FREE...guy was cleaning out and just wanted em gone. One binder was about 300 auto/jersey/#ed cards from San Deigo players.

Opportunity/Luck/Knowledge/Effort combined = a lot better results than nothing.

[Zan]

Originally Posted by isiahfan

^^^This 100%

I have gotten into estate sales in the last year...if you don't have an in (I don't) it makes it much tougher to get on the lists. If you are not first five or so in...tough pickins...though I have had decent luck with some pre-buys and where it was like American Pickers style...mostly modern 1960s-2020's stuff.

I did see an estate sale in Michigan near Saginaw in August that had ~800-1000 1948-1953 Bowman/Leaf/Topps Football/Baseball/Boxing cards...a true barn find and also a ton of comics...which I know nothing about.

I also love the flea markets and swap meets...get good walks in and a side benefit is that I am known as the "card guy" now amongst many and get clued in first to new stuff. A couple good finds this year....1976 Yankees signed ball with Munson, Hunter, etc.($200)...a box of 1970s clean football with all of the key rookies except WP (1$/each)...Mantle & DiMaggio signed /#'ed lithos ($30 for the pair)....Gretzky Topps RC ($1 - true..this last weekend)....Kobe Topps RC/Iverson Precious Metal RC (Both $.25 each)...David Arias Ortiz Flaie Wave and Cabrera Topps Traded RC ($1/each)....and binder of 1000 Stars and RC from 1978-1987 with a gem 57 Banks and about 100 stars from the late 60's-mid 70's ($150).

Also check Craigslist...I recently was found a free lot of six binders of stars from 1975-1992 and a box of 5 unopened 1983 packs with Gwynn on top and two Star Gwynn auto bags...FREE...guy was cleaning out and just wanted em gone. One binder was about 300 auto/jersey/#ed cards from San Deigo players.

Opportunity/Luck/Knowledge/Effort combined = a lot better results than nothing.

How do you go about finding a swap meet?

[isiahfan]

Originally Posted by Zan

How do you go about finding a swap meet?

We have five or so fairly well known ones in town....I would start by typing in "swap meet" or "flea market" in Yelp and see what you get...that's what I do when I am visiting a city. Do the same with google....I also ask the vendors were else they set up...I know one guy that sets up at one seven days a week...from San Diego to Oxnard.

[steve B]

Plenty of other stuff that I did well with back when I was doing yard sales. But not many cards, even junk. I've done really well selling sort of junk cards at yard sales.

The only time I got anything prewar was back in maybe 79 or 80. A single 33 Goudey at a yard sale in my neighborhood. Still had paper on it from the scrapbook, probably over paid at $1....

[philo98]

My last parent passed away earlier this year, and its amazing what and who comes out of the woodwork in these types of instances. Ive been a long-time baseball card and memorabilia collector and feel I generally know the market well and if I dont, have this entire board to ask questions. After my mothers death, everyone (family, friends, neighbors, etc etc) were pushing my sister and I to hold an estate sale and Im so glad we took our time to make an informed decision and decided against it. My parents had around 1000 antique books, almost 100 antique guns, artwork, coins, etc etc and we would have most likely lost an incredible amount of money by holding an estate sale. With the slow down in the real estate market, it may be awhile before we can sell her house but it has given us alot of time to properly research most things. I think now, with information readily at hand, finding bargains at estate sales may still occur but may be more difficult compared to pre-internet days.

[ValKehl]

Back in the late 1990's, at a large, local, long-running, monthly flea market that my wife and I set up at for several years, in the afternoon after most of the shoppers had left, I went around to see what the other dealers had for sale at their tables. One general-purpose dealer had 5 or 6 baseball cards on one of his tables, including the scarce 1953-54 Briggs Meats Mickey Mantle card on the right in the first pic below (with his $50 price sticker on it). The dealer didn't think it was a baseball card but figured it had to be worth something because it had Mantle on it. He was only too thrilled to quickly accept my $20 offer! The second pic below shows this card after SGC slabbed it.