Has anyone actually bought at an estate sale?

zef204

I was wondering if any of you have actually found things at an estate or garage sale?

I would be interested to know how has found what and where(garage sale, flea market, estate sale, pawn shop)

It seems that this has come up from time to time, but I don't know if there is a post dedicated to it.

Stone193

<< <i>LEBRON JAMES,, KAREEM ABDUL-JABBAR,,SAMMY BAUGH >>


Zef
Here's a good sign that the "estate sale" is the purple haze - when I think estate, I think older people - what is Lebron doing in the mix - of course it's possible the guy was also a modern collector - but I don't know - I doubt it.

mike

Stingray

Are those graded cards from a company called FGA or TCA? Those blue flips look familiar. Hard to see what type of condition anything is in with such far away pictures.

Stingray

zef204

I actually am not interested in his auction, it was merely an ispiration to start a thread about this and I am not sure why I included a link. That leads me to another question, is there a way to edit one of your prior posts?

AkbarClone

You can edit any post and even the title of any thread you have ever made on these boards. Just click on "edit" below any of your posts.

baseballfanatic

An estate sale is somewhere you might expect to find some Dixie Lid Premiums in a little notebook mixed in with some electric and telephone bills from the 1930's, a coffee can filled with Goudey Thum-movies and maybe a Smith-Miller truck.
If the words LeBron on Beanie appear in any of the signs or ads, drive or skim past and go on to the next one.....

skigropple

I recently gave (IMHO) the odds of finding cards at any type of sale to my brother in law, who is a sports card collector.

finding cards at any type of sale 1 in 20

finding cards that are not over priced junk 1 in 100

finding cards that are under priced and will yield a healthy profit 1 in 300.

I go to about 20 to 30 diff sales a week during the 6 month season and find a treasure one or two times a year. Garage sales have been my best bet for baseball cards but I buy many diff items so if I stumble upon a mom selling her kids collection from the late 60's I am lucky and it only adds to the items I will make a profit on. Estate sales are split into two types, sales run by family/friends and sales run by professionals. about 90% of the estate sales in my area are set up by the family bringing in a professional service and your chances of finding a steal are about a thousand to one. I would guess all professionals will take a large collection to a auction or get a dealer to sell/buy the collection. A sale run by the family will yield all kinds of great finds because family usually has picked out what they want to keep and are looking to just sell as much stuff as they can and they do not have a lot of knowledge about the items they priced. That being said most families will also seek out advice from a dealer/collector if they find old collectable items because most people think any old stuff is worth money.

It seems to run is cycles and my recent finds this year have been all Non-sports cards except for 20 NRMT commons from 57 and 69 that I cherry pick at what I thought was .10 each but got for free because I bought three sets of german cig. cards from the 30's that I flipped the next week for 10x what I bought them for. This was a garage sale of frustrated ebayer that was trying to clear out his stuff beacause the wife said it was over flowing the house. In answer to your question I would never believe the story of a person selling lots because he just wants to get rid of them because he would make more money and save time by searching for the high value cards and selling them. All you have to do is buy a book and he already mentions Mickey Mantle etc. If you bid on these maybe I could interest you in a 1988 topps set that I bought for nothing but cannot sell because shipping makes it worthless.

Jim

CDsNuts

An estate sale usually occurs like this (great estate sale find to flollow):

An older person is moving and selling their entire house with all of the belongings inside or someone has passed and their family is selling all their stuff. In either event, about 98% of the sellers will contact a local antique dealer who will come out and appraise what everything is worth and will either consign, put up for auction, or hold an estate sale/auction (everything being sold in the same place on a specific date). Most likely, anything of great value will have been subitted to a major auction or bought up by the antique dealer. It's rare to find any sportscards of tremendous value as most antique dealers will at the very least know somebody that deals in cards. Where the antique dealers have a shot at something great is when someone is selling all their stuff and the dealer makes an offer on the whole lolt of stuff or on just specific items.

My grandmother, grandfather (deceased), and aunt ran an antique business for 40 years and have come across some great finds, many of them sports related. The best was in the early 90s when they went out to a house and bought a bunch of stuff including an old trunk with a lot of crap inside. Mixed with the crap was an envelope with some cards inside- the complete 1910 Tiptop Bread Pirates set in about Ex/Mt with an Ex/Mt Wagner. My grandfather came straight to my house to find out if I knew what they were so we did a little research and found out. Then we went to the card shop and bought screwdowns for each card and they went into a safe deposit box. I haven't seen them since. I've been trying to get my aunt to get them graded for value purposes, and she finally decided that if I'm ever inclined to go to a show where PSA is set up to take them (she won't send them through the mail understandably). She seems to think the set will produce a greater value if they're kept a secret until it's time to sell, while I maintain that producing significant hype for them is the way to go. Either way, it's a great story and proves that there are great finds out there to be found.

Lee

goudeygold

Down in Southern Indiana I found a complete gray wool high school baseball jersey from the 40s with dark red felt letters. Even included a completely dry rotted glove. Bought it all for $22. I thought it was really awesome but not knowing how to display it I ultimately sold it for $28 on ebay. At the same auction (estate sale in the country near Borden Indiana) There was a German made dagger with a swastika on the handle as well as a very well preserved red Nazi armband. Primarily being interested in the near mint armband with german tags I battled another scroungy looking bidder up to $110. The crowd was in awe. seeing the other guy consulting his friends before bidding anymore I said screw it and let him have it. After he won it he threw the armband aside and was inspecting the dagger. I went up to him and asked him if he may be interested in selling me the armband since he seemed to be bidding for the dagger. He smiled and said "No... These were my grand-daddies. He took them off a German soldier in the war and I really wanted to have them" Feeling like a sledgehammer just hit me in the face I said OK and walked away. I still feel bad for bidding him up from $45 to $110 over it.

O-well,

GG

zef204

I'm not much of a fan of that type of memorabilia, and the only thing my grand-daddie took from a German soldier was a number tatooed on his arm a life time of bad dreams.

NickM

I've had much better luck finding other types of collectibles at estate sales - political memorabilia, books, records, silver (jewelry, utensils, or stemware), antiques, etc. Buys do pop up, and it's often well worth it to go. The most common type of sports collectible I find at these that's actually a good buy are old programs and yearbooks, with pins probably being second.

I also hit garage sales, rummage sales, flea markets, antique shops/malls, and thrift shops looking for sports collectibles. My last sports card buy at any of these places was in January or February - several 660 ct. boxes full of NM-MT 2002 Topps (cherry-picked, but with plenty of minor stars) for $6 apiece. As an autograph collector, that was a very useful purchase.

My most recent interesting buy in this fashion was in March at a rummage sale - an autographed hardback copy of Orlando Magic GM Pat Williams' book for $1 - and the autograph was "To Nick".

Nick

SDavid

This is a little OT, but since it's so difficult to find quality cards at these kinds of sales, what do dealers mean when they say they've been on "buying trips?" For example, in the past bbcexchange has advertised his finds on buying trips on his site. Are these guys just going around and finding the best possible deals from other dealers?

bowdowntome

It sound like the estate sales around here in small town mid-America are a bit different than the ones described thus far. They are usually run by 1 of 3 local auction houses. As far as I know, they do not have any pro's come in to evaluate items. Most of the stuff that is sold at these sales is just junk anyway.

I've learned a couple things by going to them: 1)If an item is specifically mentioned in the ad, it's probably not worth what they think it will bring (example - "Huge collection of old baseball cards" usually refers to 3 or 4 5000 ct boxes full of commons from the 80's and up.) I have never seen anything that I would call a significant "find" at these estate sales. However, if you know where to look, success can be had with other items that are not cards, but may be sports related, and very collectible. The auctions around here are usually set up so that all the individual items being sold seperately are placed on tables, and usually sold first. These are what they believe to be the "featured items", usually glassware. I usually make a quick scan of these and move on. Then there is usally a furniture and large item section. Last, but not least, is the "junk box" section. These usually consist of all the stuff the auctioneer feels will not sell individually, thrown into large boxes and sold by the boxful.
This is where I've had the most success in finding items of sports interest, most in the form of magazines. The good thing is that this stuff is never mentioned in the paper, the bad thing is everybody else, including all the local ebayers, know it.
I'm lucky, I'm usualy the only one at these sales looking for sports related items and more times than not I am a successful bidder at rock bottom prices. Some things I have gotten in boxes of "junk" (some not sports related, but I'll buy anything if I think I can profit) - Large stack of sheet music from the mid 1800's (Box of junk cost me $5, sheet music sold on ebay for around $200 total), 8 Cleveland Browns football programs from the 1940's and 50's (Again $5 for the box, progarms sold for an average of aboiut $35 each), 5 1960's St. Louis Cardinals (football) yearbooks (Cost $10 off the featured table, kept for myself). 6 Large boxes of Sports Illustrated magazines stretching from mid-70's to early 90's ($5 per box, I've been selling these off and on for a few years now, so ne telling how much I've nade on it. I use to be able to sell individual Michael Jordan S.I.'s for $10 ea, but not any more)

Most of the boxes of junk are bought by local swap sellers for $1-2 a box, then they take them to the local swap meet and sell stuff out of them for .25 -$1 each. Not exactly my kind of selling, but to each his own.

Believe it or not, I've had more success finding items at overpriced antique stores. The trick is to look for items that are not obvious. Sports cards in general are what I would call obvious items, because most peolpe know what they are, that they are collected, and where to find values. Oddball items are easier to find bargains on.

But please, stay out of neighborhood..........I don't need the competition.

detroitfan2

It's been probably 15 years, but my dad once found 4 1/2 vending boxes of 1959 Topps series 2 football cards at an antique store in a fairly large metropolitan area. The boxes were opened but the cards were not picked through and had the vending "curl" to them. Cards were in real nice shape. He ended up selling the lot to Mr. Mint at a Detroit area card show. He made a decent profit, but not nearly what he would make today. Of course, he isn't finding them today.

These is an interesting post. I've been wondering this for quite a while where in the world people get their raw cards for grading (I know there's been some posts about this already). Ebay and card shows don't seem like good candidates.