It truly saddens me when someone comes to me with a box of baseball cards from the 80’s and thinks they have a goldmine on their hands. I hate being the one to tell them that they will be lucky if they can given them away, much less walk away rich. While baseball cards were mass produced in the 1980’s, card companies such as Topps learned their lesson about how this affected card values, and changed the world of cards from the 90’s on.
If you want to sell your box of cards from the 80’s, I will not be able to help you. However, if you have vintage cards from the 70’s or older, or newer cards from the 90’s on up, you just might be in luck. Before you do anything, you will want to determine how much each of your cards are worth. The most popular price guide is Beckett. However, their online and magazine prices guides cost money. Tuff Stuff offers a free online price guide, but most hardcore baseball card sellers do not think the pricing on Tuff Stuff is as accurate as that of Beckett.
eBay used to be the land of opportunity for baseball card sellers. Today, it is rough going because everyone and their brother is trying to sell cards on eBay. There is still profit to be made here, but you have to know how to properly list.
If you have a card that is worth a lot of money, search eBay first to see if there are already listings for it. If there are, you will want to hold off on listing your card, hopefully until a time when yours is the only one. You should also search completed listings in order to determine what prices a card like yours actually sold for.
If you have a lot of cards that are not worth much individually, consider grouping them into lots. This will save you a ton of money on listing fees, and will increase the perceived, as well as actual value of what you are offering. Baseball card lots do well on eBay, as many people do not want to fool with buying their cards one at a time. You can separate these lots into brand, card type, player, or any other combination that you think will garner attention.
A final piece of advice is to list your baseball cards at a price that shows they are valuable, but be careful not to overprice. Card rarely sell for their full value unless they are rare, or are highly sought after issues. Searching the completed listings will help you determine if what you have falls into these categories.
Other places to sell your cards include auction sites other than eBay, and baseball card message boards. There will not be as high a turnover rate using these other methods, but you just might make more money per sale. It is worth checking out all of these option in order to determine how to sell your baseball cards for profit.
Sources:
How To Sell Baseball Cards Online The Easy Way
How To Buy and Sell Baseball Cards
How To Sell Your Baseball Card Collection
