Baseball cards

[jupiterpig]

This is a topic that I have pondered a lot this weekend:

So i was cleaning out my closet at my parents house and came across like 4 notebooks full of hundreds of baseball cards that I have had since being a kid. I looked through 1 book and a few notable names I saw were Barry Bonds (2 cards from 1990), Sammy Sosa (1990 White Sox), Gary Sheffield, 5 Chipper Jones rookie cards...so im guessing there may be a few good cards in the other books...

my question...do yall think that selling baseball cards is what it used to be? I remember back in the 1990's that it was a big deal to have cards and buy Beckett magazine to watch card prices, but have since not paid attention. Thoughts about value of baseball cards or other types of collections (ie: Stamps) and do they carry the same value that they did in the older generations today or is it a lost hobby / longterm investment??

[emon87]

Baseball cards as an investment are... well.. they aren't an investment. A number of factors contributed to it, but, unless you have the really old cards, they're worth very little.

[brendanb438]

OP if you have a $100 worth of baseball cards there consider yourself lucky.

Honestly don't waste money on a Beckett or similar mag for pricing. Go onto eBay and search for the specific card and check finished auctions. This will show you what those cards are truly worth. And 99.9% of cards from that time are currently worth a couple bucks at most.

-Brendan

[Fishhead24]

The card market is a vast array of over produced cards from 1980 forward.

Yes, there are valuable cards in this timeframe, but they are few and far between and they must be in NRMT condition at worst.

For instance, a 1987 BARRY BONDS rookie can be had for under $5.

I have a ton of sportscards(2 million+) and I've been liquidating them weekly at local auctions and on ebay. Will be so happy next year when I'm down to less than 1,000 total of excellent valued cards only.

[King Yao]

Some baseball cards are very expensive and the secondary market for vintage cards (either rare or very high grade) has never been higher. When I say vintage cards, I mean cards before World War II.

Unfortunately, most cards from the mid 80s through the mid 90s are worth very little. This was a period of incredible overprinting as the card companies kept printing and selling to the newbies coming into the hobby as investors.

I suggest you visit a site like PSACard.com or Beckett.com and go to the message boards there with specific questions, heck maybe there is something rare out of your find. But from your short list of cards you posted, I would not get excited at all about the total value.

[BradleyT]

[ QUOTE ]
The card market is a vast array of over produced cards from 1980 forward.


[/ QUOTE ]

Ding, ding, ding.

I have many unopened wax pack boxes from 86-89 from topps, donruss, and fleer. They're worth less today than I paid for them back then. I thought I was super smart back then by buying unopened boxes to save - so did 5 million other people.