[meatfinger]

I first went to the collectibles forum only to find that it is caked over in dust from a lack of use. If you feel the need to move this, I understand, but I'm posting it here so someone might actually see it.

When I was little, I collected baseball cards. I had a decent collection for a kid. Lots of cards. Not too many that were ultra-valuable, although that may have changed in the 15 years since I last checked prices.

I'm at a point in my life where I'd like to look at selling them, and wanted to get some advice from anyone who may be in the know when it comes to these sorts of things.

1) Is there a way I can get a reliable assessment of the value of my collection for free? Do any of you know of websites were I can check the value of individual cards?

2) What do you think would be the best way of going about selling them? Go to a collectibles shop/sports memorabilia store? Online via eBay or Cragslist? Should I sell my whole collection as one package, or would it be worthwhile to sell some of the more valuable pieces individually (if indeed I have any valuable pieces... fingers crossed).

Any thoughts, advice, or suggestions would be helpful.

[BillSPrestonEsq]

Originally Posted by meatfinger

I first went to the collectibles forum only to find that it is caked over in dust from a lack of use. If you feel the need to move this, I understand, but I'm posting it here so someone might actually see it.

When I was little, I collected baseball cards. I had a decent collection for a kid. Lots of cards. Not too many that were ultra-valuable, although that may have changed in the 15 years since I last checked prices.

I'm at a point in my life where I'd like to look at selling them, and wanted to get some advice from anyone who may be in the know when it comes to these sorts of things.

1) Is there a way I can get a reliable assessment of the value of my collection for free? Do any of you know of websites were I can check the value of individual cards?

2) What do you think would be the best way of going about selling them? Go to a collectibles shop/sports memorabilia store? Online via eBay or Cragslist? Should I sell my whole collection as one package, or would it be worthwhile to sell some of the more valuable pieces individually (if indeed I have any valuable pieces... fingers crossed).

Any thoughts, advice, or suggestions would be helpful.

For any moderately valuable ones I would try ebay. I have a few valuable ones floating around from back in the day. A collectibles shop will rip you off. Craigslist will likely not have the audience you need as these are kind of a rare specialty interest at the moment.

For instance I have a mint Michael Jordan Rookie card and a couple Negro league cards. I doubt the market will fade for either of those sorts of things.

[thesteve]

Back in the day I used to rely on the Beckett's books for pricing. Of course with the high pace of change in today's market I doubt many people are going by that any longer. I'm sure they have some sort of online version of that.

From what I've seen, the baseball card market, particularly for cards from when we were kids (for clarification, the bulk of my collection is from 1988-1996) isn't very strong. In fact, the last time I looked (a couple years ago) it was worse than it was in the late 90s.

If the collection is big enough you might be able to find some bulk card buyer willing to buy a whole set for a rate somewhere around 5-10cents per card. The problem with selling this way over something like eBay is that you're going to have to deal with shipping (once again, if the set is big enough) something really big. I know that if I were to ship my entire card collection I'd be shipping an oversized box weighing at least 100lbs. For individual cards, eBay could be a great way to go.

Of course, the problem with going to a card shop is that the guys in there are going to be interested in stuff they can turn for a profit. Suddenly your $10 rookie card is only worth $4 to the man behind the counter.

I don't say this stuff to push you to not sell. These are just the types of things that I go through every couple of years when I think about selling off my stuff.