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  1. #21




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    My best advice would be this; I am saying this as a husband and father who just had to downsize his collection. Here is my back story and what I had did.

    My son is eight months old now. He was born last October in 2012. This past February I was shoveling snow and hurt my back. I had two herniated discs and a pinched nerve. I just went back to work this past week and missed twenty weeks off of work. My wife is on maternity leave. Needless to say we were not making much money at all. On top of that our furnace went on us and we have an old air conditioner that we replaced together to save some money in the long run. That was $4,900 for the pair of them. Needless to say even though we saved for my wife's maternity leave we did not save enough to cover me not working and to replace the furnace and air conditioner. We had to get money somehow. I figured that I could sell hockey cards and that will help. The way that I decided to thin the collection was this:


    I pretty much just got all of my cards out that I have. I then prioritized them and made groups of most wanted to least wanted. I had no use for a couple thousand base cards that I have and I talked to the owner of my LCS. They told me that they sell their full boxes to a dealer for $50. (four row boxes) I asked them if they would pay me $25 for a box so that way they can make money off of me. It was easy money for the store and it saved me having to sort through three boxes. Easiest $75 I have ever made on hockey cards and I do not miss them the least.

    Then I had just PC cards and traders left. I just bulked all of my inserts together and sold them off as lots on eBay. That got me a couple hundred bucks and I did not miss them in the least. Very few people collect inserts anymore and if they do it is only to fill a need in their player PC. Then I just had my PC and traders which were jerseys, autos, patches and rookies. Then I just started to thin that group down from about 1,000 to down about 150 that I am at now. I really did not need that Jason Alison Upper Deck jersey card or that Bob Boughner BAP auto. I just took cards like that and made them up into ten card lots and sold them on eBay. I just started off the auction at $9.99 with $5 for shipping. Guess what, most of the lots sold and some had more than the opening bids on them. Now my lower end traders that are not even scanned are at least decent players who will have some value.

    Then I was down to my nicer traders and my PC. For my PC I collect one card of every player to ever play for the Habs. My goal is then to upgrade that one card to as good of a card as I can get. Major preference goes to a card picturing the player in a Montreal uniform. So now I am at the point of selling off some PC cards or my traders. (Look in my sig, I do have some nice traders in there) I decided to go with the opposite of what most would do and I sold some PC cards. I figured that my PC cards can always be replaced at a later day. If I were to sell all of my traders then I would pretty much just be stuck in the hobby. I would have nice PC cards that are not available but no traders to essentially "play" with. What I mean by "play" is that I can still use my traders to trade and sell to get other traders and maybe some PC cards.

    I went and sold a few of my bigger boys. Price Cup ARP, Subban Cup ARP, Pacioretty Cup ARP, Maurice Richard cut auto /4, Galchenyuk Superlative auto/patch /9 and some others that went for good money. It does suck when you are packaging your cards up and sending them away but just try to remember that having cardboard is not worth having debt. Now that those cards are gone and I am back to work I do not miss the cards all that much. It just gives me something more to chase after now.

    So with all of this being said you did come to the right people to ask. If you were to seek a financial advisor or a bank manager and tell them your situation they would all tell you to sell you cards and do it now. If they do not have a passion for what your passion is then they will never truly understand you passion. If you have PC's of numerous players or sets just split up the PC and get rid of what means the least for you. If you PC say five different players just pick your fifth favorite and cut there. See how you are sitting financially and then decide where the next cut should be. Once that is done just keep the process going. Once the debt is payed off or at a manageable amount you have done your job.

  2. #22




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    I was up til midnight looking through everything, I found maybe 30 cards I forgot I even owned and could part with. The rest of it, they're still my babies..............

    Decisions, decisions.........

    With a statement like that, it's likely going to be best to sell everything. If you can't work from a prioritized perspective, then the collection will likely never be liquidated. Then with the options of having all of the cards and all the debt or none of the cards and none of the debt, the latter sounds like the better life to me.

  3. #23
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    Yes. Don't be fearful to sell. I started selling when I had 500K cards. This week I am finally under 10,000 cards and going down.

    Now my wife, like your Ex - Stole $13,000 from this hard sales work and has not replaced it. It was given to her for safe keeping/rainy day money and she BLEW it all.

    I am the stay at home Dad. This is a problem, similar to the 134,000 problems that you have.

    The solution to my problem, is now I have in the last year had 7,000 reasons to not allow her to see what I am doing. Hopefully when finished, I will have exactly $25,000-30,000 reasons why I got out of the hobby, and they will be all mine.

    You're well known, use it to your advantage. If you need help attracting buyers, we can all get the word out and assist you.

  4. #24







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    Tim, you're my cold-blooded hero hahahahaaa!!!

    The more I read through this stuff, the less attached I'm feeling to most of it. How many Gordie Howe autographs does one person need? One. Plus maybe that other one heh.........but not six.

    Thanks everyone!! That was A LOT of opinions............I think I got what I needed.

  5. #25




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    I can give you first hand advice on this. We had 2 mortgages for nearly 8 months with no additional income coming, meaning it was an additional $750/mo going out for the mortgage + Utilities.

    I started by clearing out my non-PC stuff, then as the days turned to weeks, then months, it became time to part with my PErreault PC. At the end of the day, this is a hobby. Everything that I moved, I believe I could replace if I wanted to. I can not replace a house, my family or our safety. It was an easy choice.

    I would sell what you can piece by piece, then look to move other stuff in a bulk lot.

    Just my 2 US cents

  6. #26




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    I feel ya man. I have over 132,000 reasons to want to be selling my cards and getting real in my life. But with the $ I make at my job, even if i sold my entire canucks collection, and every nice thing i owned, i'd still be in the hole about 100 of those reasons, and still be working the same job, maybe getting a raise once a year. Claim bankruptcy? Keep your cards? Or just sell your Keslers, to a Kesler fan, and keep the rest ;)

  7. #27







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    I feel ya man. I have over 132,000 reasons to want to be selling my cards and getting real in my life. But with the $ I make at my job, even if i sold my entire canucks collection, and every nice thing i owned, i'd still be in the hole about 100 of those reasons, and still be working the same job, maybe getting a raise once a year. Claim bankruptcy? Keep your cards? Or just sell your Keslers, to a Kesler fan, and keep the rest ;)


    Heh. Bankruptcy isn't the answer, the debt is secured against the house, my ex would be homeless, and I'm not THAT cold hahahaaa.


    The day I decide to go ahead and sell is the same day Canucksfan007 offers me up these.............








    I'm so weak.



    But I did pull my first 192 cards out of the autograph binder to sell!!

  8. #28




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    Well you know who to offer any Canucks cards to :P

    Heh. Bankruptcy isn't the answer, the debt is secured against the house, my ex would be homeless, and I'm not THAT cold hahahaaa.


    The day I decide to go ahead and sell is the same day Canucksfan007 offers me up these.............








    I'm so weak.



    But I did pull my first 192 cards out of the autograph binder to sell!!


  9. #29




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    Sell it all and pay of the debt. Just do the math on the interest you will be paying. Its a simple decision. best of luck to you

  10. #30






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    I would sell everything. Saying "I'll only keep a few" will lead to, "I'll only keep a few hundred", in my personal experience. For the cards that you LOVE, I would trade them to people that you know will love them, and then sell the traded cards you got for them (assuming you want to make sure you know the cards/pieces go to a nice home). Debt is nothing to play with, and estimating 12 years, always plan for much longer than that, because thats assuming nothing goes wrong with ur car, home, employment, ect. Naturally, I certainly never hope that happens to anyone, but in 12 years time, ANYTHING can happen. I would sell everything off, and then start the collection again. Look at it like a "second chance to start again", rather than a re-building.

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