Selling an Inherited Collection
Packer
Posts: 16 ✭
Greetings all. I’m not a sports card collector but I recently inherited a large collection of mostly baseball and football cards. Some older, some newer, some complete sets, etc. Not a ton of cards, but enough to fill a couple standard size cardboard file storage boxes. Mostly post 1980 baseball and football cards but some older baseball cards. Fortunately, I had the chance to discuss options with the former owner before their passing earlier this year and we agreed selling the collection makes the most sense. The only request the owner had was that I do my research and get the best value I can.
I’ve spent the last few days researching options online and what I think would be best is for me to hire a consignment service that would sell the cards for me. I don’t have the knowledge or the time to list everything on eBay and I don’t live by any dealers or a large city where I might have nearby options. I think hiring the services of someone that does this professionally would be best.
My question to the group is what consignment services have the best reputation in the industry? I see a lot of mixed reviews of both PWCC and Probstein123?? Are either of these reputable and if you were in my shoes what services would you be considering?
I would like a one-stop-shop where I would ship the entire collection to a service and have them take it from there and sell it off as they see best fit. I’m in no hurry for the money. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you.
Comments
I had a chance to go through everything over the weekend and put together the attached 2 page list. Image file 1 is page 1 and Image file 2 is page 2.
Any additional advice based on this inventory listing would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
I would start by adding some pictures to this post of what you think might be the best stuff in the collection and then we can give some advice. If there are any boxes like wax boxes, set boxes, etc..., pictures would be very helpful. Stuff from the 80's could be very valuable, but also the late 80's was the beginning of the junk wax era, but even some of that is starting to have some value.
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No unopened boxes or packs of anything. All cards are in white generic looking card boxes. I wouldn't even know where to start to look for the "best stuff"....?
PWCC no longer sells anything other than graded and unopened product.
You are going to have to go thru it unless you just dump it in someones lap and tell them to make you an offer. You can't maximize the value without putting in a little work.
My advice would be to google “19** nfl key cards,” etc. for each year for each sport. Use the results to cross reference what you have and go from there. The 1981 nfl complete set, if in “mint” looking condition could be worth something too. Best of luck to you!
In looking at your list, it looks like you have a lot of "junk" era cards, late 80s through mid 90s. There is not much value there. You do have a couple decent football sent listed, 1984 and 1981. Depending on condition, these could bring a few hundred dollars.
I have 30-40,000 random BB cards in my basement mainly starting at 1979 (none graded)
I'd be elated to be able to unload the whole lot of them for $2k plus shipping expense.
My better option is to donate them to a LL team.
Guess I hold on to them for the memories
I recently inherited a football collection too. About 15k cards from '72-87. I'm mainly a baseball guy, but do know the higher end NFL HOF'ers but not a lot of those mid-tier guys. What I did was had ebay open in one tab on my computer to check values on if it was better to get graded or leave raw etc, then I had one tab with cardboardconnection.com so I could read their key cards an other cards that have value (errors/sp's/etc) in each set I was going through, then I just googled NFL HOF'ers in the 70's/80's/etc to get a list of those guys I would've overlooked. I've gone through the collection two full times and on the third time I was still pulling out guys who I had missed.
It's going to take some time and effort on your part to piece it out and maximize value. Most people aren't going to want the "junk wax" era cards, which you do have some in that collection....but you do also have some good years that has potential to yield good cards. For example in NFL '72 has some good rookies like Staubach, '81 has Montana, '84 is loaded, and '86 is loaded too. In baseball, the '60s cards have a bunch of HOF'ers in them as well, but most of the baseball you listed is not very valuable except for some key cards here and there. I know very little about NHL, but I would assume there's good stuff in the 70's, and be on the lookout for any Gretzky RC's from '79. You need to do your homework and familiarize yourself with the different years and it'll start to come together. Google and Ebay will become your friends.
What is closest big city to the collection right now? The board here might be able to recommend someone nearby who can give you an expert opinion on how much value you're sitting on, and how much effort it would take to extract that value.
I'd set your expectations very low. Unless you have some uncommon treasure hidden away in those boxes, making any money selling cards is a grind. You'll likely have to choose between a quick sale for very little money or a long drawn out project that yields slightly more money.
Excellent points by thehallmark. Looks like you have mostly low value items and getting any value out of it will be a grind. Perhaps a few gems in the lot. Not a lot of juice to squeeze here. Good luck and hopefully you can get something out of it. You might also want to try other boards, such as net54 and Blowout.
Thanks. Some of this is starting to make some sense as I learn.
Thank you for the information! Looks like I have some work cut out for me. As far as HOF's do I want just rookie cards or are they good for all years? I'll check out those sites you listed, thank you.
Duluth or Minneapolis, MN
Honestly, I have no idea what it's worth... $200 or $5,000+??? If its any less than maybe $1500 I probably would consider just dumping the whole collection at once. Unless it's worth a few $1000, I don't have the time to spend hours and hours going through everything to squeeze the juice as you mentioned. Time is money as the say. I'll put the time in if the return justifies it, but if it's only for a few $100, I'd rather just dump the lot. So that's what I would like to determine at this point. Thanks for the comments!
In most circumstances similar to the one that you mentioned, the collection is typically on the lower end of your estimate in terms of value.
One suggestion: Go to the HOF website for each sport. Copy and paste the members of the HOF into a spreadsheet. Then go to cardboard connection and type in/paste in each HOF'ers name. Find out if the rookie card year overlaps with your card inventory. Fish out that card. You can do it for subsequent years as well for good measure. Some players in the HOF have cards worth quite a lot even in non-rookie years.
Another point: Google search "notable [sport] rookies [year]" For example "notable baseball rookies 1982". Mostly it will lead you back to carboard connection but they will list key cards that year. Or some other sites might have a list of most valuable cards for that year.
Depending on your schedule, I would be interested in sitting down with you and taking a look at your cards.
I live in Minnesota, near Cambridge.
Not looking to buy them.
Generous offer from you Joe.
@Packer I would take him up on this offer, he can give you a clear path forward on this.
HOF SIGNED FOOTBALL RCS
I am retired, and need a break from retirement! ;-)
I'll put you up in St Pete for a couple days to get out of the cold, only 4 hours of ebay listing a day required. LOL.
HOF SIGNED FOOTBALL RCS
I can strongly relate to that.
The most basic beginner cheat sheet for most "found" cards is older=better & top condition=better. For the older years you listed (60s-70s), the value is going to come from key players and items being top condition. Most of anything else (commons & low grade) will be added weight. Depending on the quantity too, there could be some value in older commons, but they again have to be top shape and/or high number/short prints to really start to move the needle.
It wouldn't take much, especially if they are well sorted, to figure out who to look for. I'd suggest buying a couple old Beckett monthly magazines. You might even find someone willing to send you some for free (or maybe you cover postage). I suggest this to ID the key cards and not for an accurate value, especially if they are old enough editions. They used to sell them at newsstands/book stores. you might even be able to buy a current copy and use it for a decent judge of potential value as well. Most of this information is available online as well. just google a sport set and year and often you'll get the basics pretty quickly.
For example, the 1981 Topps football set contains the Joe Montana rookie card. That is not only the key card to that set, but probably the key card of the entire decade for football cards. After that, it gets thin pretty quick for 81 Topps. Dan Hampton, Art Monk and Kellen Winslow were the other lesser biggies when I was still following football cards closely. There may be some guys who eventually made the HOF that were not quite hitting their prime that I may not be as up to speed on, especially as you get later into the 80s. That is why it is always good to check your sets against the current market. Billy Sims and Joe Cribbs were sweet All Pro RC pulls in 1981 when I was opening packs, but neither had the career that made their cards worth much of anything later on.
I am retired, and need a break from retirement! ;-)> @Ahmanfan said:
Take a look at the weather in Minnesota right now, I will be shoveling/snow-blowing for at least 4 hours today. Happily it's not windy outside.
Rookies are where the bigger money would be at. If it's a bigger name like Staubach, Payton, Montana, Marino, Rice, etc and the card is in really nice shape then they're probably worth $5-$10 each maybe. In my collection I'm going through, there's also quantity. There's like 50 Marcus Allen's from various years. Individually they're only worth a buck or two, but when you sell them all together as a lot, it adds up quickly.
With the items you listed it will be tough to get over $1500 in my opinion of course without seeing the cards myself
Join the Rookie stars on top PSA registry today:
1980-1989 Cello Packs - Rookies