FInal Sale

[Archive]

Posted By: Cat

An issue that has been discussed recently and I have put some thought into.

First of all, I am 44 and my heir (son) is 15. My mother is still alive. My bigger issue is that I don't have a will, but I will solve that shortly. The baseball cards portion of my estate I hope would be enjoyed by my son rather than automatically sold off. If he chooses to sell them at some point, he has a basic knowledge of what they are worth and mechanisms to buy/sell. Certainly someone (himself or someone helping him) could make the mistake of listing everything on EBay or attempting to send everything to an auction house. I do have some newer cards that aren't appropriate for an auction house...but that will work itself out. The key to what I have taught him and my mother is: do not let ANYONE talk you into buying them directly. It is not always apparent which cards are valuable. I have pulled out my PSA 7 Toleteros Gibson and told them: "you would never know it, but this is a valuable card."

All my cards are graded and he, and my mother, understands that the flips hold key information. So, as an example, instead of selling my Anson N172 card on Ebay listed as "Really Old Baseball Card," he would probably simply type the heading on the flip and that would be fine. That's a good example of a card that's not appropriate for EBay but so be it.

First, I think I am hesitant to direct my son to an auction house or any other sells solution since I am hopeful that he will enjoy them for awhile. Second, I hope that I am not going to die any time soon, so I have this fear that I will construct a will today, never to be revised, and 40 years from now nobody will have heard of Mastro Auctions (or similar auction house). Third, right now, and hopefully in the future the cards are a small portion of the estate, so if he only gets 75% of the possible realizable value of the cards because he didn't use the best possible liquidation solution, then oh well.