What to do with about 20,000 commons + stars?

bsfastball

So over the past few years from cracking decent wax boxes (key years/brands from 1980-1995) I have accumulated somewhere in the neighborhood of 20,000 commons + star cards. I would like to get rid of them, but any ideas on how it would be worth my while? I heard you can donate them to take a tax write-off, has anyone done this before? Any ideas/thoughts welcome.

zef204

Yes, I have done it to a local children's hospital. But I also have seen here that people have tried and the hospital has turned them away.

I know in many areas that Salvation Army has drop offs or even pick ups, and you can write it off for that. I have a few hundred thousand cards waiting to go and haven't done anything about it in a while. I live in a big city and I know of a drop off center and I think as soon as the weather gets a little better I will just go and drop them there. You fill out the paperwork yourself and they just stamp it and then you are golden as far as tax purposes.

But I have no idea what happens to the cards from there. I hope they don't just toss them, but if they do, at least it is them and not me as I obviously could never do that.

julen23

try children's hospital.

you simply need a point of contact to drop off the cards at the front desk of the hospital. there is an administrative dep't that is responsible for taking ALL donations to hospital. they will only ask that the cards be unopened or in some (non-loose) package. i have submitted simply using the big cardboard boxes factory sets come in and it worked fine.

i actually submitted a bunch of cards this past x-mas to cook county juvenile detention center here in chicago.

gl and hope it helps.

Julen

Boopotts

Grab a few VG-EX mid 60's Mantles, add them to the lot, put it up on Ebay and watch it all sell for $1700.

digicat

Churches that do work with kids like stuff like that too. My local church has a pretty big youth department, and they were more than happy to take a donation of 70,000 cards. They provided me with a letter to use for my taxes as well.

ArnyVee

I donated about 150,000 cards to an organization passing them out to kids. They probably had loads of fun with those things!

I used it as a tax write off and no problems.

larryallen73

Pick a charity... any charity... get a receipt and then prove up the "value" with a price guide. Of course there are some semi-stars mixed in there and maybe even a few "mint" (i.e. it must be "mint" if straight out of a pack) stars you didn't want. Using a good retail price book you can get a pretty high value. That price guide may not be Ebay reality but it's enough for tax deduction purposes in my persona, and very un-professional, opinion. I am not a CPA so take the free advice for what it cost. Good luck!

onlyanumber

I know children's hospitals have been mentioned numerous times, but how about a Children's Home Society--Children & Family organizations? There are a lot of kids out there in foster care or in unhealthy home situations. In most cases, the only presents/clothing/etc they get are via donations. And donations of the sort are tax write offs. Every county has one.

WinPitcher

I have around 200,000 cards myself and it would take a pick up truck to deliver them to a childrens hospital. I can see it now, I begin bringing in monster box after monster box of cards and the lady in pink at the front desk begins to freak.


Meanwhile I am doing 2 things, I am unloading unwanted crap and getting a tax writeoff. The recipients are getting my crap and endless days of cleaning up the mess.


No thanks, I'll not put that burden on anyone.


If you really want to get rid of those cards begin giving them away in semi small lots 500 cards at a time, maybe to neihboring kids. WAIT don't do that either! You will soon enuff be getting a phone call from lil johhny's mother telling you to get over there and clean up all the crap you gave her son.


Steve

wufdude

I finally realized a few weeks ago that a trip to the dump made the most sense for me. I can't imagine any kids would want thousands of '90 Donruss....

ArnyVee

When those kids have nothing....I'm sure they'll take your '90 Donruss.

I've been there first hand to see the smiles and the faces light up when giving homeless kids gifts....you can't imagine what a difference our 'junk' makes to someone else.

AkbarClone

Are these all just base set cards, or do they also include update, rookie, supplemental sets and/or parallel set cards like gold, silver, tiffany, etc?

bsfastball

Thanks for your tips guys, much appreciated. The salvation army sounds like a good bet.

Akbar, no they are not all base cards, although the majority are. There are probably 300 to 800 cards/inserts with book values between $5-$50. I just dont have the patience to go through them all and list them.

Allen

You can send those to me....

I have had some luck (especially FB) with breaking commons down into college lots. Nothing better than trading 500 Maryland players for 500 WVU players. I can sell WVU guys for $.25 to $1.00 each at shows where as the cards I gave up were just commons. Baseball can be broken up this way or by the player hometown/ birthplace. There is a market for everyone somewhere, especially if you can get a large lot together to ease the shipping and increase intrest amongst bidders. Lots of ex-players put on camps and such and people are willing to pay good money for a lot to have some cards to get signed or give to campers etc.

MiniMaster

I like the donation/charity idea the best. However, for those inclined to want to market there common junk. You could buy a card vending machines and keep slapping all those cards into these machines and sell them 3-4 for ..25-.50 cents a pop? I've seen these machines in Pizza establishments and other similar locations. I'm not a great fan of these machines, but just thought I'd share the idea as another alternative