Who is downsizing? how do you decide what to keep?

[Hawaiian Bam Bam]

Who is currently in the process of downsizing their collections? how do you decide what to keep? I have so many PCs and collect so much , i am spread all over the place. im looking to downsize and refocus on just a few PCs...what about you? how do you do it?

[Hockeydude94]

I recently decided to downsize after prematurely selling a card that immediately became white hot the second it left my hands (Lost out on $400. Grrr...). Right now I'm working on about 100 sets (including one graded set), collecting 4 different teams, 2-3 different players, super collecting Peter Worrell, and picking up whatever high-grade hockey RC's and vintage baseball I can. Oh, and did I mention I don't have a job? Yeah... definitely time to downsize.

Ideally I'd love to trade/sell everything that doesn't fit these categories, but that's impossible. I'll probably dump a couple team/player collections and do my very best to acquire only what I 'need'.

[patriotsguy]

As a team collector I had too. I need to still get rid of base/insert/gu/au dupes but anything low end I used to keep anything under 35, I had to scale tat back to anything under 10, everything else needs to get sold.

[mrveggieman]

Yeah I remember when I collected several years ago I tried to collect whatever I could get my hands on. It didn't matter from bench warming scrubs in the 1 cent box to superstar rookies. Eventually common sense prevailed along with me getting my own place and having other things on my mind. When I got older and started collecting again I focused on rookies, autos, and the players in my sig. Sometimes I wonder if that is still too broad of a collecting plan when I see that I'm starting to accumulate about as many cards that I had as when I collected everything. I'm not sure if I'm going to downsize or not but I know that a little organization will do wonders for my collection.

[Tivo32]

I'm not sure if I'm going to downsize or not but I know that a little organization will do wonders for my collection.

I've found doing this has greatly helped my collection and it makes it a lot easier for me to see what I have, want to keep, want to sell etc. And it's just a whole lot of fun to go over all the great cards I own. If I spend a few days organizing, it keeps me off eBay and puts a few extra dollars in my pocket.

[FlyersFan]

I recently sold all of my cards because Im out of work again so it wasnt to hard of a decision. Right now Im just doing in person and a little TTM auto collecting. I figured thats something that my daughters and I get in to, they get to meet some players, and also I get to meet some players I like to watch now and retired guys that I have enjoyed there careers. I would say that when downsizing and your not under the pressure of needing money just look at your collection and weigh these three questions. 1) What can I live without ? 2) what do I still look at on a regular basis ? (I found that I had a lot of cards in my box that I hadnt looked at in probably 6 to 8 months) 3) Do I still enjoy chasing down things to improve this part of my collection ? Good Luck!!!

Oh and hockeydude - to address your post, When the basketball contenders set first came out that had Jeremy Linn's rc auto in it I sold that card for $4.25 on ebay and then last year when his hype was going crazy I think I saw one sell for $300 + so yea I know where your coming from on that one .....LOL.

[Hockeydude94]

Oh and hockeydude - to address your post, When the basketball contenders set first came out that had Jeremy Linn's rc auto in it I sold that card for $4.25 on ebay and then last year when his hype was going crazy I think I saw one sell for $300 + so yea I know where your coming from on that one .....LOL.

You got me beat! But yours was understandable, Lin came out of nowhere. Mine was a Mike Trout 2009 Bowman Chrome Prospects Auto. He got off to a slow start, hitting like .225 at the end of May so I bailed. Got about $250 for mine... and now it sells for at least 2x more.