General Forum

It would likely take some effort, but to truly determine what a common is you have to go through each player during that time of baseball and pick out the stars, semi-stars and regular player (common). Stars will be the hall of famers (or guys like Bonds, Clemens, etc) while semi-stars are the ones that stood out during that era but aren't considered one of the greatest. These two types would cost a little to a lot more compared to commons. 

I know that it shouldn't be considered the price go-to, but you may want to pick up a Beckett's thick annual guide and look up various sets. You'll see what are considered commons given the price posted.

I'm not disagreeing with you but I am on a lot of card sites on Facebook and assuming we aren't talking about a Biggio rookie card there are guys putting together lots of 50-100 Biggio cards for $.05-$.10 per card and hoping to find a buyer. They do sell some of these lots so it's not a bad way to go if you want to go through the effort of sorting by player and then creating the listings then packaging and selling them.

I don't sell many cards. It seems though that many of the card flippers that are heavily into it aren't going to mess with those. They will pull the major cards and then bundle the rest to sell for whatever they can get for them.

You and I are on the same page here.  I'm not talking about a Biggio rookie.  

Having just started entering my collection onto TCDb in the last month or so, I am learning there are so many different ways to go about selling the collection.  It really is just a matter of how much time you have and if that extra buck is worth it to sort/pull/package out the cards.

On that note, is there any value to a buyer other than just a 'thank you' when a collection is sorted out and not in a jumbled mess?  

In my opinion, no. I buy quite a bit of cards locally and lots of commons. A lot of times they aren't even by sport. Would I like them all sorted out? Yes. Am I going to pay extra if they are? Probably not.

I think with being new and desiring to sell a collection I would suggest doing it in layers. Skim off the best and figure out how you want to sell them. Once sold, go to the next layer (speaking in terms of value). At some point you will probably determine enough is enough and just throw the rest in a big lot and sell locally for whatever you can get and it probably won't be much at that point. You may as well sell it locally because by then the cards left are probably worth less than shipping costs.