What's new
Fantasy Football - Footballguys Forums

Welcome to Our Forums. Once you've registered and logged in, you're primed to talk football, among other topics, with the sharpest and most experienced fantasy players on the internet.

Sport Card Collecting (1 Viewer)

GroveDiesel

GroveDiesel

Footballguy
Recently found a bunch of my old sports cards I collected when I was younger and my daughter had a blast going through them with me. 

I'd love to give her the excitement of opening up packs of cards and curating her own collection. What's a good way of doing that these days? I'm pretty lost when it comes to the market these days.

I see you can buy lots of old packs fairly cheaply on eBay. Is that at all worth it, or are those all pretty much opened and resealed after someone took out all the best cards?

What boxes or brands now are worth buying for baseball, football and basketball? 

I'm not necessarily looking for cards that will be worth a ton, but finding some good players or really cool looking cards would be super exciting for her.

 
GroveDiesel said:
Recently found a bunch of my old sports cards I collected when I was younger and my daughter had a blast going through them with me. 

I'd love to give her the excitement of opening up packs of cards and curating her own collection. What's a good way of doing that these days? I'm pretty lost when it comes to the market these days.

I see you can buy lots of old packs fairly cheaply on eBay. Is that at all worth it, or are those all pretty much opened and resealed after someone took out all the best cards?

What boxes or brands now are worth buying for baseball, football and basketball? 

I'm not necessarily looking for cards that will be worth a ton, but finding some good players or really cool looking cards would be super exciting for her.
Click to expand...
Pretty much all of the massively produced stuff from the 80's-90's is worthless, from a monetary point of view.   The market was completely saturated and so many collected and saved that I'm sure the cheap boxes are real and unopened.   If you are doing it for fun, then there is a lot of cheap stuff out there for you.  I'd go for rookie years of players you like(d) in the sports you or your daughter like.   That rookie card hunt always is fun. 

The modern sports card collectable market is dominated by true rarities (pre 80's/post 90's), limited production runs and novelty cards, such as a piece of a baseball players mitt on the card.  

 
tone1oc said:
Pretty much all of the massively produced stuff from the 80's-90's is worthless, from a monetary point of view.   The market was completely saturated and so many collected and saved that I'm sure the cheap boxes are real and unopened.   If you are doing it for fun, then there is a lot of cheap stuff out there for you.  I'd go for rookie years of players you like(d) in the sports you or your daughter like.   That rookie card hunt always is fun. 

The modern sports card collectable market is dominated by true rarities (pre 80's/post 90's), limited production runs and novelty cards, such as a piece of a baseball players mitt on the card.  
Click to expand...
This describes a portion of my collection. I have somewhere in the range of 300k sports cards and I'd be lucky if 1% of it has any real value. I have unopened boxes from the early 90's that make up roughly 5%. I'd value the total lot at $500-$1k.

The memorabilia collection is worth a little more. But not much.

 
I have full set of 1987 Topps,  that'sthe stamp on the box. Does that make it 1988?

and full set 1988 the score 

can part with for cheap asIddon'tthink they are worth anything :unsure:

 
Last edited by a moderator:
eoMMan said:
You should buy one of those old packs with the concrete stick of bubble gum. YouTube yourself biting into it. Good schtick.
Click to expand...
I like to eat old gum. One or two bites and it goes right down the hatch. You couldn't chew it if you wanted to. 

 
Principles of expected value are applied to the price of all sealed product. Thus, market forces efficiently influence the current price of not in print sealed product, be it a pack, box, or case. You could get lucky but really not. You will be stuck with all the chaf and still be -Ev after selling the valuable stuff.

If you want to invest, buy Box's of much older stuff. as people decide to crak packs for what ever reason the value of the sealed product will go up as supply goes down.

 
I thought I would **** this old thread out of the ground. I started collecting some again a couple years ago after not collecting for about a decade. I kept my collection but started to add to it buying some new stuff. I have come to the conclusion that it's incredibly expensive and not profitable to buy the new stuff. The new hot items are very expensive and seem to drop quickly. For those who have been out of the hobby now the big things seem to be parallels (collecting the rainbows), serial numbered cards and autographs. I think I am finding the junk card era a blessing now. I can fill the gaps in my collection from that period of time with little expense. My hay day for collecting was late 70's and early 80's and I am now trying to focus on finishing sets left uncompleted from that time frame and filling the voids I have in my collection from the junk era. I have also noticed that the cards from my hay day aren't highly sought after now so I can work on filling out some of those years for what I think are reasonable prices.

I'm curious to see if there are others still collecting around here and if so, what they are collecting these days and what their take is on the state of the hobby.

 
Warhogs said:
I thought I would **** this old thread out of the ground. I started collecting some again a couple years ago after not collecting for about a decade. I kept my collection but started to add to it buying some new stuff. I have come to the conclusion that it's incredibly expensive and not profitable to buy the new stuff. The new hot items are very expensive and seem to drop quickly. For those who have been out of the hobby now the big things seem to be parallels (collecting the rainbows), serial numbered cards and autographs. I think I am finding the junk card era a blessing now. I can fill the gaps in my collection from that period of time with little expense. My hay day for collecting was late 70's and early 80's and I am now trying to focus on finishing sets left uncompleted from that time frame and filling the voids I have in my collection from the junk era. I have also noticed that the cards from my hay day aren't highly sought after now so I can work on filling out some of those years for what I think are reasonable prices.

I'm curious to see if there are others still collecting around here and if so, what they are collecting these days and what their take is on the state of the hobby.
Click to expand...
The hobby really falls into two categories:  Collectors and gamblers.

Collectors like to have cards of player X or the Toronto Blue Jays, and aren't worried about the price guide or what it's going for "on the Bay".  They like what they like for a non-monetary reason.

Gamblers will buy the expensive packs - frequently spending $500 for a pack for $100 worth of cards, on the off chance they will hit a "White whale" that could go for thousands.  And even when you do get thousand dollar cards, there is high risk.  I say this as an owner of several Andrew Luck rookie cards.

I stopped about 3 years ago - it became an addiction and frankly, a waste of money better off invested in another way.

If I were going to "invest" in it again, it would be in cards 1960's and earlier, but the stock market is a better play.

If you are in it for the pleasure of collecting - have fun!

 
I'm always seeing stupid "Player X opening a pack of 30 year old baseball cards" advertisements I never click on.

My uncle got into the business at the low point and I ended up with a 200 pounds of cards that I ended up donating.  Took the longest time to find someone who would actually accept them as a donation.  Wrote off the retail value. 

 
I collect and don't invest. I'm a set builder and I suppose that was my goal when I was a kid.  That is probably why I stopped buying anything current. Even buying new in Wal-Mart on some brands you pay well over $1 a card. What the heck? I'll buy a stack of cards from the early 1980's over a couple of new cards.

 
belljr said:
I have full set of 1987 Topps,  that'sthe stamp on the box. Does that make it 1988?

and full set 1988 the score 

can part with for cheap asIddon'tthink they are worth anything :unsure:
Click to expand...
I, too, have those sets. I think shipping is more than their worth unfortunately. At least I had a lot of fun collecting them back then.

 
I found a Topps McGuire rookie card in my storage unit a few months ago in great condition.  I raced to ebay thinking it must have been worth a ton and saw $0.99.

 
Warhogs said:
I collect and don't invest. I'm a set builder and I suppose that was my goal when I was a kid.  That is probably why I stopped buying anything current. Even buying new in Wal-Mart on some brands you pay well over $1 a card. What the heck? I'll buy a stack of cards from the early 1980's over a couple of new cards.
Click to expand...
I think Topps or someine would clean up if they started selling .50 packs again with 15 cards and a stick of gum. Knowing you're not going to sell them for jack, but want to collect for fun again.

 
Jobber said:
I think Topps or someine would clean up if they started selling .50 packs again with 15 cards and a stick of gum. Knowing you're not going to sell them for jack, but want to collect for fun again.
Click to expand...
I thought Topps had come out with a basic more affordable set the past few years but can't remember the name of it.  Probably still too expensive for kids to collect or set build.

 
I will say that some of the premium cards today are really nice looking. Too bad they are so expensive. I agree that if a company came up with a nice design and eliminated all the premium chase cards and parallels and just had them cheap they could do quite well by focusing on a brand marketed to be inexpensive for kids that want to collect. 

 
Jobber said:
I think Topps or someine would clean up if they started selling .50 packs again with 15 cards and a stick of gum. Knowing you're not going to sell them for jack, but want to collect for fun again.
Click to expand...
Topps Opening Day is pretty dang cheap.  The base Topps isn't terrible either.

ETA:  11 packs of 7 cards for $10.

https://www.walmart.com/ip/2017-Topps-Opening-Day-Baseball-Value-Box/262825935?wmlspartner=wlpa&selectedSellerId=0&adid=22222222227074984325&wl0=&wl1=g&wl2=c&wl3=188302143528&wl4=pla-294474439577&wl5=9017876&wl6=&wl7=&wl8=&wl9=pla&wl10=8175035&wl11=online&wl12=262825935&wl13=&veh=sem

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Some of my best times were spending my 50 cent weekly allowance on two packs of Topps football cards.  My friends and I used to spend hours going through each pack, looking at stats, trading cards.  Those were the simple good ol' days before video games, etc.

My grandfather told me some great stories about his baseball card days (he grew up during the Depression).  He said they would actually buy a stick of gum, and it came with a baseball card (I always wondered why my cards came with an old stiff piece of pink chalky gum). But rather than collect them and put them in fancy plastic sleeves like we used to, they would play a game with them.  They would stand back about 10 feet from a wall and see who could throw them as close to the wall without actually touching the wall. Whoever got closest got to keep all the cards thrown.  One of their best strategies included FOLDING the cards to make them fly better.  Now, those were good ol' days...

 
Slowly (very slowly) trying to complete 1957 Topps Football and 1967 Topps Baseball sets. Have a long way to go on both, although have some of the more expensive ones. Just buy a couple a year on EBay.

 
ConstruxBoy said:
Slowly (very slowly) trying to complete 1957 Topps Football and 1967 Topps Baseball sets. Have a long way to go on both, although have some of the more expensive ones. Just buy a couple a year on EBay.
Click to expand...
I will always have the memory of completing a 57 Topps baseball set with my Dad.  It took us all over the country, and it was a blast.  I don't know if they still have baseball card shows or not, but that was my second favorite memory.  We'd go to local school shows and/or the National Guard Armory shows and sell, trade, buy with everyone there.  So much fun.  Do those kinds of things still exist?  I have a TON of my dads old cards from the mid 50s and my cards from the late 80s early 90s as well as some football cards.  I have a stadium club Favre rookie card somewhere.  No idea what it's worth....probably $.99

 
Warhogs said:
I will say that some of the premium cards today are really nice looking. Too bad they are so expensive. I agree that if a company came up with a nice design and eliminated all the premium chase cards and parallels and just had them cheap they could do quite well by focusing on a brand marketed to be inexpensive for kids that want to collect. 
Click to expand...
I personally think most of them are dumb. I really like Topps Heritage, don’t care for almost anything else.  Will buy the Reds teams sets from the Topps base set for my kids for autographs. 

 
The Commish said:
I will always have the memory of completing a 57 Topps baseball set with my Dad.  It took us all over the country, and it was a blast.  I don't know if they still have baseball card shows or not, but that was my second favorite memory.  We'd go to local school shows and/or the National Guard Armory shows and sell, trade, buy with everyone there.  So much fun.  Do those kinds of things still exist?  I have a TON of my dads old cards from the mid 50s and my cards from the late 80s early 90s as well as some football cards.  I have a stadium club Favre rookie card somewhere.  No idea what it's worth....probably $.99
Click to expand...
Yes card shows exist. I haven’t been to one in 30 years though. 

 
I guess I am a gambler.  I do a lot of online breaks, and try to hit bingo.  Been pretty hot the last few months.  I could never afford 1700.00 for a 2 box case of Flawless Collegiate football...But a 50.00 spot in a break get me a team and a chance.  I hit 2 JuJu cards, One was a 1/1 worth about 800.00 and the other was out of 10, another 150.00

I have also been skunked, but, I do like to gamble

 
I have a bankers box full of who knows what.  That dang thing has been moved a half of a dozen times but I just can’t seem to part with it.  I have everything from garbage pale kids to 70-80’s hockey cards to worthless 90’s tops/fleer/score cards.  Anyone want it for their kids?  It might just be time to say goodbye. I actually shed a tear as I think about letting it go but I have no idea what I would ever do with it.  I have a ton of Jordan cards, Shaq rookie cards, a joe montanta 2 or third year, countless rated rookie cards, etc.  I remember waiting for the Becker guide to come out so I could go reprice my fortune.  My brother traded a Ken Griffey rookies card (I don’t remember who was the hot brand that year but it was priceless at the time) for a Bo Jackson RR only to have our dog eat it that night....he was devastated.  Those were the good old days!  

 
Was just talking about baseball cards with some friends the other day. I was collecting them in the mid 80's. Pretty much every card is worth less than when I bought them.  Barry Bonds, Clemens, Doc Gooden, Boggs, the list goes on.

I paid I think 50 ####### bucks (as a kid that was like a million dollars) for a Jose Canseco Rated Rookie Donruss, it's worth about 5 now. W T F

I do have every Dave Parker card though, those were worth every penny. The Cobra was a bad man.

 
I have tons of late 70s, 80s and 90s football cards. I also have a bunch of unopened starting lineup Cowboys figures which immediately were worth nothing once McFarland came out with his. They're still all in a Tupperware in my basement in hopes that since they're worth nothing for so long that everybody trashes theirs and they become rare. 

 
Last edited by a moderator:
My Dad went ahead and gave me part of my inheritance now so he could enjoy giving it to me.  6 boxes full of cards from the 50’s-80’s with all of them basically the top players in hard plastic cases.  Some seem to be worth a decent amount.  I told my wife I have no plans to sell them for a long while but it did get me thinking:

1. From a purely financial POV will these cards increase in value much or would I get basically the same now or 10 years from now?

2. What is the best way to sell them?

3. What’s the best way to appraise them?

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Football and Basketball cards from 80s/90s still have some decent value (compared to baseball).  They have to be in excellent condition for them to be worth anything though.

My kids are super into sports, so I got all of my cards out of my parents attic and brought them to our house.  My next step is to separate by sport and really see if I have anything in great condition.  

I do think a cool thing for young kids, especially if they're a fan of a certain team, is to put all those teams cards together just to teach them about some of the old players.  Mine like to read the backs and say thinks like "Daddy, did you know that Ricky Jackson had ___ sacks in 1989?"

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Long time ago I traded a good chunk of what I had for the Fleer Michael Jordan rookie card in near mint condition.  It turned out to be a fake.  My interest in card collecting was shot after that, which was probably a good thing.  I probably saved a lot of money by not buying any more of that crap that ended up being worthless.  

Now I just have a small box of stuff, maybe 100 cards, all rookie cards that are not worth much.  The likes of Bonds, Deion SAnders, Barry Sanders, Lawrence Taylor, Glavine, Smoltz, Mutombo, Larry Johnson, Favres, Kosar...................that type of stuff.  None of which are the types of cards that would have any real value, but just sort of fun having the rookies of the guys I grew up watching as a kid. 

I keep meaning to deck out my basement into more of a mancave atmosphere (wife approved  :excited: ) and put all these on some sort of framed picture on the wall.  A nice conversation piece of "hey, member when this crap was worth something, and now it's all worthless?"

 
AAABatteries said:
My Dad went ahead and gave me part of my inheritance now so he could enjoy giving it to me.  6 boxes full of cards from the 50’s-80’s with all of them basically the top players in hard plastic cases.  Some seem to be worth a decent amount.  I told my wife I have no plans to sell them for a long while but it did get me thinking:

1. From a purely financial POV will these cards increase in value much or would I get basically the same now or 10 years from now?

2. What is the best way to sell them?

3. What’s the best way to appraise them?
Click to expand...
1. I don't see how they will increase.  If anything, I think they will decrease eventually as our generation starts dying off.  Younger people could not give two ####s about these things.

2. Ebay

3. Have them graded.  I've never done it, but if they are in really good condition, this will maximize your return.

 
The collectible industry is just in a freefall.  Ebay has made things just so easy to transfer to collectors now, and in general people place less value on rare non monetary items.

Only the rarest of the rare stuff has any value whatsoever and the condition needs to be absolutely perfect, and graded in a slab.  

I took on my grandfathers coin collection to try and liquidate it, he had some old baseball cards and for the most part those were not even worth wiping my ### with.  He was a huge Nolan Ryan guy and had some Mets stuff that graded so ####ty I gave up on some of the rest of it and donated it for a charity auction.  

I'm still trying to get some of the coins moved, but at some point I'm just gonna go to ####### coinstar.  ### #### millennials and their avocado toast.

 
I used to collect, but got out of it in the middle 90's. What I didn't stop doing was buying a team set of my favorite team (Orioles) every year.

I have binders from almost every year from the mid 80's to this day with a few older team sets thrown in. I just like looking back every few years and seeing the players I remember from that time period. Every now and again I'll buy a single player card to add to the team sets.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
never collected, but did a ton of flipping (mostly in the basement of our building) ... first guy with a "leaner" took the whole pile - on the best days we'd have up to five of us flippin' - mostly Muttsies fans, still living off the "YA GOTTA BELIEVE!!!" '73 WS run ... i remember my biggest haul was upwards of 150 cards, a dozen of which were Wayne Garrets - but i also bagged some Horace Clark, Celerino Sanchez, Ron Bloomberg, Roy White, Thurman Munson (i was a Yankee fan) ... and also the 1969 Seattle Pilots team pic card, which i held 'til i sold it to a Williamsburg carpetbagger who was from Port Townsend ... she gave me $75  :shrug:

 
I was a small time operator on ebay in the late 90's/early 2000's but got out after the steroid scandals, fake autograph scandals, and the grading of cards took off. (Plus it was pre-paypal so there was a lot of fraud to deal with.)

The grading thing was a total racket and completely arbitrary. If something didn't grade a 9 or 10, it was worthless and it was extremely rare to ever get a grade that good on a card. You could spot the unscrupulous sellers on ebay because there was a racket where if something graded as an 8 or less it was worth less than an ungraded card so people could buy the 8's or lower, break them out and resell them to some other dreamer hoping to send the card in, pay the fee and hope they hit the jackpot on a 10. Some sellers weren't too smart about it because ebay would show in their history buying a graded big name card and then an ungraded version of the same card would come up for sale from them a short time later. Final straw for me was a Jordan rookie I had graded, which looked flawless but came back as "trimmed" and ungrade-able. So much fraud out there, just ridiculous.

 
culdeus said:
I also wonder how many counterfeit are out there. Printing tech has come a long way. 
Click to expand...
Yeah, it was bad enough 10~15 years ago. I can only imagine these days.

At one point I would have liked to collect a full-set of '86-'87 Fleer basketball (Jordan, Hakeem, Isiah, Wilkins, Barkley, Drexler, Ewing, Mullen, Malone rookies, what a year!) but I feel pretty confident that by this day and age that the only ungraded cards for the stars out there are fakes or doctored somehow. And no way I would buy an unopened wax pack, way too easy for someone to reseal those things. There are collectors out there that are still sitting on unopened boxes, but they would be insanely expensive at an auction. I think a Jordan graded 10 is worth over 10 grand these days.

 
I collected some sports cards (mainly baseball) and a lot of comic books when I was a kid (1980s).  I left them at my parent's house for decades but they have now moved and I had to take them back.  I haven't looked at them in 25-30 years.  I don't have any room for them so I have to go through it all, write down what I have, and sell them, especially the comic books since they take up far more space than my card collection.  If anyone has any advice on how to sell comic books from the 80s I would appreciate it.  I am only looking to sell all of my books at once, not piece it out.  I need the space in my apartment back.

 
RC94 said:
I collected some sports cards (mainly baseball) and a lot of comic books when I was a kid (1980s).  I left them at my parent's house for decades but they have now moved and I had to take them back.  I haven't looked at them in 25-30 years.  I don't have any room for them so I have to go through it all, write down what I have, and sell them, especially the comic books since they take up far more space than my card collection.  If anyone has any advice on how to sell comic books from the 80s I would appreciate it.  I am only looking to sell all of my books at once, not piece it out.  I need the space in my apartment back.
Click to expand...
I would check your boxes to see if you have any of these:  https://www.sellmycomicbooks.com/most-valuable-comic-books-copper-age.html

If you do, get them graded, sell them on eBay and take the money.  If not, then eBay/Craigslist/LetItGo or donate to a charity.

 
I also have a have a few solid gold Michael Jordan cards. 

Its good to see how down everyone is on this stuff. That's exactly the kind of thinking that allows these things to be thrown away and increases the value down the road. 

 
STEADYMOBBIN 22 said:
I also have a have a few solid gold Michael Jordan cards. 

Its good to see how down everyone is on this stuff. That's exactly the kind of thinking that allows these things to be thrown away and increases the value down the road. 
Click to expand...
Not happening, man.  There’s just so much of it out there. 

 
Buckna said:
Yeah, it was bad enough 10~15 years ago. I can only imagine these days.

At one point I would have liked to collect a full-set of '86-'87 Fleer basketball (Jordan, Hakeem, Isiah, Wilkins, Barkley, Drexler, Ewing, Mullen, Malone rookies, what a year!) but I feel pretty confident that by this day and age that the only ungraded cards for the stars out there are fakes or doctored somehow. And no way I would buy an unopened wax pack, way too easy for someone to reseal those things. There are collectors out there that are still sitting on unopened boxes, but they would be insanely expensive at an auction. I think a Jordan graded 10 is worth over 10 grand these days.
Click to expand...
Even better... go for the 83/84, 84/85, and 85/86 Star Basketball sets. They're much rarer, more valuable, and not copied (except for the Jordan cards).

 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

gianmarco
Haircut dilemma
2 3 4
Replies
189
Views
5K
Beef Ravioli Part 2
B
Ministry of Pain
Christmas Gifts under $250...what are you wanting and what are you buying for others?
2
Replies
60
Views
2K
mr. furley
mr. furley
TLEF316
Online gambling addiction
Replies
36
Views
1K
The Z Machine
The Z Machine

Users who are viewing this thread

Total: 2 (members: 0, guests: 2)
Top