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Buying a collection

So I was put in contact with someone looking to sell their whole collection. The cards are likely 90s and early 2000s based on their age and years of collecting from various sports and I have this picture ahead of our meeting tonight. Frankly, modern cards are not my strength but I am interested and looking to grow my modern card collection and knowledge. I will be able to pick out the stars, but he wants to sell the whole bunch. How would you approach the transaction as far as pricing modern card commons which are probably basically worthless. Even a penny card seems high? Likely a handful of cards will make or break whether the deal is a money maker. Hoping for a stack of Jordans, Bradys, Lebrons etc but I will find out soon.

On the hunt high grade Star Basketball.

Comments

  • unclebobunclebob Posts: 433 ✭✭✭

    As somebody who has been buying large quantities of baseball cards I have a bit of advice.

    First it will be more than a penny of card because most of them will be worthless.

    I've heard figures as low as a dollar per thousand but that is going to be unrealistic. Expect to pay around a penny per card. I think my cost is about a half a cent per card.

    Secondly, most of it will be picked over and all of the big hits will be missing.

    Thirdly, you must be ready to sell a lot of small lots of common stars for very little money to recoup your investment.

    Personally I've been lucky with some error cards and enough 1970's to probably recoup my money in about one year.

    A few will go into the PC

    There is the treasure hunt aspect to the game but I would almost have rather bought modern cases and crack them betting on Aaron Judge.

    All that said I am looking at one more additional million card purchase that will include a lot of other stuff.

  • CakesCakes Posts: 3,450 ✭✭✭✭✭

    The picked over part is crucial, if you have any suspicions it has been I wouldn't make the purchase.

    Successful coin BST transactions with Gerard and segoja.

    Successful card BST transactions with cbcnow, brogurt, gstarling, Bravesfan 007, and rajah 424.
  • sushihotwingssushihotwings Posts: 452 ✭✭✭

    Yeah, I will have no hesitation to walk away from the deal if it doesn't look favorable. I am not looking to pick up boxes of junk commons. I am hoping there will be some gems that will make the deal worthwhile. The collection is small enough that I can probably look through the whole collection in 60-90 minutes. I think I will basically offer a price based on the value of the top star cards, add a few bucks for the commons and see how that goes. I have no idea on the knowledge level of the collector.

    On the hunt high grade Star Basketball.
  • KendallCatKendallCat Posts: 2,966 ✭✭✭✭✭

    @sushihotwings said:
    Yeah, I will have no hesitation to walk away from the deal if it doesn't look favorable. I am not looking to pick up boxes of junk commons. I am hoping there will be some gems that will make the deal worthwhile. The collection is small enough that I can probably look through the whole collection in 60-90 minutes. I think I will basically offer a price based on the value of the top star cards, add a few bucks for the commons and see how that goes. I have no idea on the knowledge level of the collector.

    Dave

    I bought a huge collection in college which was about 50-60k cards. All sports were represented from baseball to hockey to hoops.... I went through and saw that with the major cards alone I would make my money back 3-4 fold, and I still had 40,000 plus cards left to figure out what else. Took up the entire car and trunk to haul it back to my apartment which thrilled my roommates :D

    My advice is if there are items you like in the deal and the money makes sense, or if there are items you can sell to make back your money and then some so you can buy what you want go for it. If it is just someone's junk I would pass. If you do get a bunch of leftover cards take them to a local league or school or children's hospital and donate them - they love that type of stuff.

    KC

  • mtcardsmtcards Posts: 3,342 ✭✭✭

    The big hits are important, usually I base the biggest part of my offer when buying a collection on that alone. 50k commons and minor stars is more of time sink than a profit maker unless you can get the cards for well under a penny each. If all the superstar cards are gone, I would be offering on the low side for sure. Commons, while ok if theyre from sets like finest/chrome/etc will sell, when you have a bunch from topps, donruss, fleer etc are close to worthless.

    The biggest thing is to try and get an overall price from the seller immediately. Nothing is more aggravating then spending an hour or two sorting through cards, only to find out the seller has based his selling price on Beckett pricing and is offering it to you at half off, which is still 10 times more than theyre probably worth

    IT IS ALWAYS CHEAPER TO NOT SELL ON EBAY
  • ugaskidawgugaskidawg Posts: 882 ✭✭✭

    The last big collection that I bought consisted of about 40k cards. I paid $50. It had every sport represented. I still have a lot to really pick through. I found one Pat Tillman NFL Showdown 1st Edition. I subbed it and it came back a 10 and I sold that one card for $60. So if you feel you can make your money back pretty easily, then go for it. Then just have fun with the rest and see what you find. People will go after Bradys, Lebrons, etc, but they will leave behind a number of other valuable cards. You just have to figure out how much you want to deal with it.

    I agree with Keith, whatever is leftover, donate it. You can make a kids day and get a tax deduction out of it too.

  • robert67robert67 Posts: 1,336 ✭✭✭✭
    edited October 19, 2017 12:55PM

    .

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