General Forum

I have a collection of baseball (90%), basketball (5%), football (5%).   I've been adding them into tcdb just to know what I have before I sell.

a) The prices that are on tcdb.  What could one expect to sell their collection for relative to those prices? (assuming all nr mt condition).

b) Is it better to leave sets together and sell them or pull them out and put in a protective sleeve?

c) Is there some general rule that would give me a rough idea what it's worth?  Any real world stories/data to share?

Hello Ryan-

 Firstly- Welcome to the site and congrats on finding what I've found to be the best group of people with lots of experience and knowledge that won't allow members in who try to take advantage of others. Just check out some of the forums for a general idea of the commoradory and generosity you'll encounter.

  Now for the fun part- yours is a loaded question and honestly there isn't one reply for your inquiries other than to say...maybe? And it varies.  I think you'll get similar answers from everyone (maybe more concise than mine).

 With regard to pricing- these are set by an algorithm based on member reporting for what an individual has seen the particular card sell for and on what date. The report does have to be verified and for cards with more than 5 entries, the most recent are averaged to get what appears at the bottom of the card profile. I'd suggest clicking on the Submit a price feature to see how it is done.

  Someone else is better equipped to discuss buying and selling as I have been ready to sell mine for a while but haven't done it yet. There are companies (and individuals) who will only offer to buy entire collections you will most likely lose value yet save time and resources. If you have special pieces or a lot of graded autos, mem cards, SNs etc then I'd say you'd be better off looking at sites like ebay and entering in your item, then select filters to show "Sold" and "Completed Items" which will give you data on when and for what price the item in question last sold for...Beckett has a paid membership program as do other companies that give values but I'm no 100% if that is based on their appraisal of graded items sold or if they take the public auctions and sales in to account as well. 

  I tend to get a bit excessive with my responses so I'll stop here and let some others come in short and sweet- but best of luck and hope you stick around and let us know if you have success one way or another! Cheers! Becky Elizabeth 

Thanks for the reply.  I appreciate the information.  As with a lot of questions I ask here, I often have to digest it and get back with people.  Right now, I'm knee deep in just getting everything entered.  The site makes it pretty easy.  Once that's done, I will probably come back to this information and act upon it.  Thanks again. 

No worries- I've found it works differently for different people- i am super A.D.D. but organized so I go in cycles of entering cards, checking the forums, working on checklists/permissions etc and back to entering BUT if you haveba lot of complete sets already organized there are ways to enter them quickly without 1 by 1 steps etc so make sure to take advantage of those time saving steps and save your sanity ;)

I think your best bet is to go to Ebay and search for your card and go to the sold section.  That will give you the best idea.

Trade On!

Sires like COMC.com will give you an idea of what ask prices are like. Really it all comes down to how much work you want to put in, and who is buying at the moment you are selling.

Welcome to the TCBD! 

If you are looking to sell, my first bit of advice is to take your time. I have been burned in the past in my eagerness to sell, and there are some cards I definitely wish I had back now. Give yourself time to understand seller fees, shipping fees & policies, etc and to research the value of cards/sets. Test the waters and make a few mistakes before you start listing the "good stuff" for sale.

As for pricing, the more sources the better. The price shown for a card on TCDB is the median price entered by users. It is useful, but not definitive. Look across multiple sources (TCDB, Beckett, Sportlots, COMC and eBay sold items) and that should at least put you in the right ballpark. Also, on eBay in particular, make sure you are comparing apples to apples. Most importantly, consider what the card is worth TO YOU.

Good luck!  

A lot of things come into play.   

1.  Do you want to just dump them or get a fair price or get the max out of each card?  Dumping them all in one sale is the fastest but gets the lest amount of money.  This is were Pricing come in to play.

2.  How much time are you willing to spend on selling them?    The more time you are willing to spend the more money you will get.   You can get burned out easly if you have a lot of cards.  As they say Time is money.

 3.  What kind of cards do you have?   If all commons you can go one way but if you have all real good cards you may want to go another way.  There are people that still want commons from the Juck era you just have to find them.

4.   What platfrom are you willing to use?     Several have been listed above.  Some people will use all of them depends on what card they want to sell.

A big thing that I would recomend is looking at each set and see if there is a high value card or cards. IF you have a few higher value cards then break the set and sell a starter set with xxx cards, no dupes (or some if you are moving a few extra cards). I would recomend a website like 130point.com to get multiple selling sources for each card.

Great suggestions!  Great forum!     @budler did you mean to say "junk era".  I'm new to the game so if there really is a "Juck era" I'd like to know what it is.  I have cards ranging from 60s (a few), 70s (a little more), 80s (quite a bit), early 90s (quite a bit).  My guess is the 90s are the 'junk'.  LOL