Just Received 3 Million Cards

[Sheesh]

Hey folks. Performing some research and found this forum.

Recently, my wife's sister traded a part of her business for over 3,000,000 trading cards. These cards have spent the last 2 years occupying 7 rooms of an old hotel in Ennis, MT.

Since my spouse has a great job and we will soon be having our first child, I get to be a stay at home dad. Since I will be staying at home, I needed to find something to so. I have some computer, database and html background and, so, will be in charge of selling these cards. However, I know next to nothing about the trading card business, but will learn quickly.

3 million baseball, football, basketball, Hockey, and other types of cards, major and minor leagues, from the last 5 decades. They are from a variety of manufacturers, some are signed, have some team sets, some unopened waxes, etc. There are also some other collectable cards, like Pokemon, Enduring Freedom sets, and the like.

Anyway, I'm just getting started in the world of trading cards and thought that I would make this forum one of my stops in getting to know you and for you to get to know me. For the next few years I will be quite busy; hopefully, making other's happy through their getting the cards that they want.

I guess what I would love to hear from you folks about is, what is the best way to deal with this volume of cards? Catalog each one via software then publish on the net? Mine the mountain for the valuables and sell on ebay? Sell in lots?

Thanks!

[Melvinnapu]

Personally, i would go through every card myself to see if you can weed out the better cards. 3 million is pretty large though..... good luck man

melvin

[swill300]

Being a new Mr.Mom myself, I can relate to what you are about to do, congrats by the way, as for the cards, you are looking at some real time consuming work. My opinion as to what to do with them is to separate them by year and company, and catalog them on beckett.com, they have an automatic price guide for you to go off of. Once you find some valuable cards, put them in some sort of protective compartment (top loader, screwdown etc.) that you should find at a local sports card store or Walmart etc. but you may spend a bit more there. Then you could list the valuable cards on Ebay, but be prepared to take a hit on what you think you might get for them, book value is no where near what you will get on ebay. If you have really expensive cards, send them in to be graded, this way you will kind of protective yourself to a certain value if they get sold. Ungraded cards will not command the same price as a 9.5 or 10 graded card. As for the commons that you wont sell EVER (oversaturated market for the last few years), you can make sets from them, and doubles can be used to fill sets for others, there is a nice subset here for that. While I too am a noobie here, the moderators and other traders/buyers are quite helpful in card discussions, and I'm sure could give a better opinion as to what to do with this windfall of cards you've come across. If you have any other questions, please ask them as I said I'm sure you will get plenty of help. Good Luck

[goutnout]

Welcome to the forum!
from your post it seems that these cards were given to you as equity and you want to sell these. cataloging this many cards seems pointless as the bulk of these may end up being commons which are probably 90's so they are worthless. you should start off by finding all the rookie cards and listing them on www.naxcom.com via bulk upload sheets they have, and if they are really big names you can probably get more money on ebay. there you can see what these cards are selling for and adjust your prices acordingly as many times as you want without upfront listing fees. you should also wait to sell the cards for when a particular sport is in season to get the most bids. once all of your rookies that are worth anything are sold move on to inserts repeat etc.

[RenegadeLonghorn]

Welcome to the forum! 3 million cards is definitely a tough task to tackle. Like Melvinnapu said, it may be best to go through the cards and pick out the best players. You may have a lot of valuable rookie cards of current and past stars that may be worth something. You can always sell team lots and player lots. I usually organize my cards by team, year, set, and card #. I have thousands of cards in my collection. For the amount you have it would probably be best to organize your cards by team (for each sport) and then put together player lots.

I'd also suggest picking up a copy of Beckett (for each sport). Will help you find those star rookie cards. Also, try Beckett's free online price guide. You can look up any card ever made . Good luck!

http://www.beckett.com/priceguides/

[Sheesh]

Thanks a bunch for your replies! What a nice welcome to the site :)

I'm a middle aged man (40) and really never was into trading cards (no offense). I remember the gum packs and friends being into them as a kid. Now, MY kid is into the Yugio stuff, loves 'em.

I bet as time goes on my decision - whether just to unload the cards OR become a serious seller/trader - will be easier. For the time being, I think that I will stick to trying to organize and unload these cards and see if it suits me. Through time, I have no doubt that I will meet a bunch of folks and will come to see whether or not I have the bug.

I do have knowledge of sports players and can quickly recognize the 'greats' in almost every major sport. That will definitely be a plus. I think that I will take some advice and, first, organize by sport. As I go through these, I will also organize by team. Of course, I will pull the rookie cards of each sport, then ALSO organize separately by sport, team and name.

Deciding what are 'commons' will also be important. I guess I'm not certain what common's may be, but I assume that they are "common" cards (i.e. '90s cards when you saw the explosion of trading card interest). For example, I must have 100+ cards of some players already all organized. How to get rid of these may be difficult. With the commons, perhaps I can sell these in 1 to 10 pound lots. We'll see.

Thanks for the website suggestions. I have checked them out and they will be very helpful in future. I guess I am uncertain what would be worthwhile to catalog, as I certainly do not wish to catalog 3 million cards. I do plan on developing a database and, I think, will catalog only those that are not 'common' cards. Is it worth my time to develop my own Microsoft Access database or to just purchase one of the many cataloging programs off the net?

From this, I think that I will develop a website buisiness and then sell these cards online, perhaps dabbling in some ebay and other auction sales. From what I have been able to see on the net, there aren't many dealers out there with a million, much less 3 million, cards available. And, perhaps that would be the draw. Even at $.01 for some no name, folks will come to know that they will be able to find some greats as well as many obscure players on this site.

At some point, it also might be fun to go to some of the trading card shows and events, as well as flea markets. With a new baby, it might be alot of fun to go to markets with him as he grows and before he is in school. Might be a fun time for the both of us :)

Anyway, sorry for the long reply. Just wanted to thank you all for your replies and to let you know that I am giving your suggestions some thought. See ya around the block!

[sealedpwr]

Sheesh- Welcome to SCF, Sounds like you have a big job to do.

If you have any Questions or concerns please feel free to send me a PM and i will do my best to help you out.

cliff

[teacheric]

Welcome to the Forum!

I didn't take any time to read the other posts, so forgive me and this reply if it is redundant.

If time is not a hinderance, I suggest:

1) Buying a Beckett. I would choose the Beckett Plus, but you may benefit from the Annual Beckett since it lists the entire print runs of most card companies. (However, it is very thick and can be cumbersome when finding cards.)

2) Find the good players. Take'em out. As for the others...

a) you can sort by team (takes a long time)
b) put them back into the boxes and sell cheaply (takes shorter time)

3) Use your local card store for assistance - or the board...

4) Have a great time!

=)

[Star_Cards]

hey sheesh,
as a buyer of large low end lots of cards, I would recommend that you sort out commons and focus on player lots. I'm sure you can find bulk buyers for commons out there just to move that kind of stuff. I personally buy commons but since I'm in Indy we are too far away to do anything really. Shipping on heavy commons pretty much kills any chance of a deal...at least from what I've experienced. I run a lot of player lots on eBay and have accumulated quite a few regular customers that way. I also opened up an ebay store at the beginning of 2005.

As for wax, sealed stuff usually sells fairly decent on ebay as well. If there are some decent rookies in the set that usually helps increase the sell prices too.

Good luck,
mark

[Sheesh]

Thank you everyone! What a nice welcome to the site, so many folks willing to provide useful advice! I have already started poking around and, if ya don't mind, would like to use this thread for present and future questions.

Am already separating by sport, weeding out the commons. I have directed my focus to pre-'93 cards. So far, after only 10 or so boxes (each containing onthe order of 25 pounds of cards), my oldest is a '67 Bob Allison (Topps 194).

What I also have, as has suggested, are lots of commons, particularly in baseball and football. However, what I am also noticing is there are quite a few (what I believe to be) manufacturer runs. For example, I have Cards 1 - 700 of the Upper Deck '91 series. Lots of other examples, too. I take it that, at least with the common cards, I should not break up the set?

Anyway, again, thanks for your help and I am finding all sorts of cool stuff. I'm hoping, if I can find a decent catalogging program to use, sometime in the next 3 months I will have product for folks to review.

Peace