Purge advice needed,..

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bombie1138

Veteran
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5.00 star(s)
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Messages
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Location
Orion Arm
Need some Vet advise,..
I've been collecting for about 20 years now.I have so many cards now that I'm thinking that I would be better off just scaling down big time,..I have on average have spent 500.00 a year on new product,.
Here's a basic breakdown of what I want to purge,.
All 1990 and up,.all baseball:
Commons over 100,000 cards
HOF and Star Cards base over 10,000 cards,..not counting Bonds and Clemens
Star inserts Over 2000 cards
Sets about 25

So I'm figuring if I can recover half my cost's (5000.00) and keep the PC all would be good.
The market seems to be soft and E-Bay is expensive and I am not sure which way to approach this with a positive result,.
I'm thinking these are some of my options,..
1. Hit the Flea Market
2.E-Bay
3.Craigs list
4. Just keep trading away and scale down that way

All input would be appreciated,
Clint
 
What Don Mattingly stuff do you have ...
The best way to cut do is to try and use a few cards to trade for one bigger card you want...
 
Need some Vet advise,..
I've been collecting for about 20 years now.I have so many cards now that I'm thinking that I would be better off just scaling down big time,..I have on average have spent 500.00 a year on new product,.
Here's a basic breakdown of what I want to purge,.
All 1990 and up,.all baseball:
Commons over 100,000 cards
HOF and Star Cards base over 10,000 cards,..not counting Bonds and Clemens
Star inserts Over 2000 cards
Sets about 25

So I'm figuring if I can recover half my cost's (5000.00) and keep the PC all would be good.
The market seems to be soft and E-Bay is expensive and I am not sure which way to approach this with a positive result,.
I'm thinking these are some of my options,..
1. Hit the Flea Market
2.E-Bay
3.Craigs list
4. Just keep trading away and scale down that way

All input would be appreciated,
Clint

Without knowing more specifically, it's hard to give any real solid advice. What sets? what inserts? etc.

The 50% might be tough to get. For a lot of products, base cards don't sell well and aren't in high demand. Our card club routinely had auctions where base lots from 86-96 or so didn't get $3.00 opening bids for a 5,000 count monster box, stars included. I can buy a case of 1994 Stadium Club series 2 or 3 for $100 shipped, that's under half cost when it was new for sealed cases that include stars, rookies, inserts, etc. That leaves your inserts and sets. Some of those sell well, others don't. Got a set of 2004 Topps? You can buy a fair amount of the different factory set versions for $40 or so delivered, those include the bonus cards, if yours is hand collated, it'll likely go for less. Got inserts that fall 3, 4, or 5+ per box? They normally don't sell well. The tougher pulls sell decent, but even some of them fall pretty cheap. Look at the 1996 Leaf hats Off, a 1:3 box retail only pull, and a Griffey sold for $6 shipped, that's 40% of book, 20% if you factor shipping out, there's a Ripken that's up now, wouldn't be surprised to see it end at 50% BV or less, and those are two of the most collected names in the sport.

Craigslist is tough to get anything near 50% because there are dozens of ads with similar lots looking for the same type of payout. Without a detailed list it'd be tough to differentiate yourself from the guys with a vending case worth of 1992 commons looking for what they paid for the case. I've heard some people do okay at flea markets, but I've never taken a flyer on any 'lots' there. Again, too easy to end up with a bunch of stuff with little to no real value. Ebay isn't an option for most of it, especially lots, they're awkward, bulky and heavy. That means expensive shipping. How many people are going to pay you anything for a box of 5000 commons anyway (or 800, or 2400, etc) and then add an extra $8-10 to get them shipped? That pretty much leaves trading for all but the higher demand stuff.
 
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If you're bored...you could do team and/or player lots...they may sell better.

I was thinking that too,..
I went through a few boxes about a month ago and I'm sitting on about 1000
base cards so far for these teams:

Red Sox
Cardinals
Philly's

With shipping being expensive would E-bay be the best option?
If I went through everything I probably could come up with 5000 base of every team,.I don't have Paypal but I do have a friend that moves a lot of product and would probably handle the E-Bay end for 10%.
I also want to set a time goal,..maybe 6 months to a year,..
 
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You can get about 2500 cards into a flat rate box (that is boxes packed inside the flat rate box) and that costs around $12 I believe. I have seen some buy boxes like that of their favorite team for a few dollars each, but not a bunch. I would be interested in some of those, like say the Cardinals and the Yankees.
 
I was thinking that too,..
I went through a few boxes about a month ago and I'm sitting on about 1000
base cards so far for these teams:

Red Sox
Cardinals
Philly's

With shipping being expensive would E-bay be the best option?
If I went through everything I probably could come up with 5000 base of every team,.I don't have Paypal but I do have a friend that moves a lot of product and would probably handle the E-Bay end for 10%.
I also want to set a time goal,..maybe 6 months to a year,..

No, ebay would KILL you for stuff like that. Say you put together the flat rate boxes in the example before this post. $12 shipping is your cost, figure 3 800 count boxes inside makes 2400 cards. Even if you could get someone to pay $20 shipped for the base card lots, you'd likely need the inserts, stars, rookies, and commons mixed in to get that. That means you're making $8 a box, you said you have 5000 per team, roughly 2 lots per team, so $16 a team x 30 teams is $480, less ebay fees, paypal fees, the 10% to your friend means maybe $400 in your pocket. You'd better have some MAJOR inserts and those 25 sets better be decent if you're looking to get anywhere near $2000, let alone the $5000 you mentioned.

here's a 1600 count lot of inserts that went for $39.99 shipped
http://cgi.ebay.com/HUGE-1600-CT-BA...=US_Baseball&hash=item4cefbb3730#ht_500wt_896

go to the sports card section of ebay and search completed listings for 2400 lot or 5000 lot, 5000 count lots of football including stars, rookies, GU going for $45 shipped, 2400 lot of Cubs not getting the $25 + $15 shipping opening bid. When they say a few dollars, it'll likely be literally a few dollars.
 
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