It's true, "one man's junk is another man's treasure"

While at a show this weekend, spent a decent amount of time at a dealer's "junk" booth.

You know, a table or booth filled with crap that will only sell if priced really low.

Or will only sell if someone like me comes along.

For a whopping $16, I bought 20 "vintage" 80s-90s hobby magazines like Beckett, tuff stuff, etc and about 20 rak paks with stars showing (posted some in a different thread).

With hundreds and hundreds of vintage card magazines I already have, I'm still pretty surprised how many I find which I don't have at shows despite being 20 plus years old.

Anyone else buy junk stuff?

BBCgalaxee said:

Anyone else buy junk stuff?

Click to expand...

Hell no.

I've been doing my best to get rid of everything that I don't collect. The only exception being a few sentimental cards and items.

I used to have stuff like that, but now it drives me nuts. I don't even open wax because I don't want base around that isnt part of a set I'm collecting.

linuxabuser said:

Hell no.

I've been doing my best to get rid of everything that I don't collect. The only exception being a few sentimental cards and items.

I used to have stuff like that, but now it drives me nuts. I don't even open wax because I don't want base around that isnt part of a set I'm collecting.

Click to expand...

+1 Haha

All the time.

I love collecting '80s "junk" cards and magazines, because that was the era of my favorite collecting memories as a kid.
I've bought large lots on eBay of '80s baseball card publications, like SCD, Baseball Hobby News, Baby Cards Magazine, etc.

And I'm putting together a complete run of '80s Fleer and Topps small boxed sets (Those mass produced 33 and 44 card sets of superstars sold at Walgreens, Toys 'R' Us, KayBee, etc. and '80s cereal and other sets that came in food like macaroni and cheese, snack cakes, granola bars and sunflower seeds.

I also love the late '80s, early '90s Classic baseball sets that came with trivia games. They're really nice looking cards

I basically collect all '80s oddball baseball cards, (minis, stickers, Donruss Action All-Stars, Topps Rub Downs, etc.) except regional team sets, unless they're of the Rangers.

Most of the oddball cards from the '80s are worthless to modern collectors, but I'll gladly spend $3 for a little set that reminds me of the glory times of my collecting years.

I try to avoid buying junk unless it's something where I think I can make my money back in a few months. I did pretty well years ago buying up large lots of minor league cards and stickers and listing them on Sportlots, back before there were so many sellers there.

----

The old magazines are different. I seriously want to see a hobby periodical archive created with all the magazines scanned, OCR'd (at least the articles, not the price guide listings) and fully searchable. There is an enormous amount of great information locked up in those old magazines.

It would be cool to see COMC launch something like that as a paid archive, similar to NewsBank or NewspaperArchive. Or maybe Google could launch Google Hobbies and sort out the reproduction rights issues.

BBCgalaxee said:

While at a show this weekend, spent a decent amount of time at a dealer's "junk" booth.

You know, a table or booth filled with crap that will only sell if priced really low.

Or will only sell if someone like me comes along.

For a whopping $16, I bought 20 "vintage" 80s-90s hobby magazines like Beckett, tuff stuff, etc and about 20 rak paks with stars showing (posted some in a different thread).

With hundreds and hundreds of vintage card magazines I already have, I'm still pretty surprised how many I find which I don't have at shows despite being 20 plus years old.

Anyone else buy junk stuff?

Click to expand...

Just bought a "junk" lot of about 29 cards for about 9.95 plus 4.99 shipping. Bad listing... Sold the Will Clark promo card for $90 already! . Have about another $100 in cards remaining. These deals are rare though! Most junk is just that... But beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Tom

Tom Oates said:

Just bought a "junk" lot of about 29 cards for about 9.95 plus 4.99 shipping. Bad listing... Sold the Will Clark promo card for $90 already! . Have about another $100 in cards remaining. These deals are rare though! Most junk is just that... But beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Tom

Click to expand...

What was the Clark Promo ? Hope it's not something ill regret knowing about

Ryan

1997 Select Etched Foil Promo. You can check out the completed auction. Item:171693084878

one sold the week prior for $99 so I listed mine for $99 OBO and sold it quickly for $90. At that profit margin and such a quick flip, didn't feel like I needed to hold out for anything more. I also got a pinnacle inside stand up promo of Jeter/Bernie Willams/pettite/tino martinez in the lot and some Griffey promos. It takes a lot of time and effort to find these deals and when you do someone else usually sees them too and bids them up. I got lucky this time!

Tom Oates said:

1997 Select Etched Foil Promo. You can check out the completed auction. Item:171693084878

one sold the week prior for $99 so I listed mine for $99 OBO and sold it quickly for $90. At that profit margin and such a quick flip, didn't feel like I needed to hold out for anything more. I also got a pinnacle inside stand up promo of Jeter/Bernie Willams/pettite/tino martinez in the lot and some Griffey promos. It takes a lot of time and effort to find these deals and when you do someone else usually sees them too and bids them up. I got lucky this time!

Click to expand...

Nice find!