I sold off most of my baseball cards today (20 yrs worth)

I spent a good part of the weekend taking my cards out of binders and putting them into 700 count boxes to clear up some shelf space. After it was said and done, I realized that I no longer needed these cards. They were commons from 87-93, just about the time when everyone who is now over 25 was collecting heavily (think jr.high / early high school). I wound up with about 8 "new" boxes that came out of the cards that I pulled from the binders. I had about another 12 in the closet. After deciding to keep a few boxes of just Topps cards, one box from 87, 88, 89, 90 and 92, I came to the conclusion that the rest had to go.

Knowing the value of these cards, I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to get any money past postage for them. I put a few notices on other message boards that I would sell them for basically the s/h costs and I had no takers.

I then put them on craigslist for $5 per box of commons, which comes out to almost $.01 per card. Someone hit me up within the day, wanting the whole thing. In the end I sold him 15 (700 ct.) boxes for $65. It's kind of liberating to get away from all of those cards. I have about 6 boxes that I kept which fit nicely into one corner of the shelf in my closet and about 4 moderate sized binders of cards.

The cards I kept aren't worth a whole lot, but I wanted some for TTM / IP purposes. Has anyone else gone through a similar purge of their cards and if so, what was your experience?

PS - I have about 150 9-pocket pages here and a few binders if anyone is interested. If so, PM me.

My dad was a quantity/quality person, so everytime we would go to the LCS, he would buy a monster box of commons for about $5. Now I am stuck with THOUSANDS of base, they litter the floors, shelves, and boxes in the basement. I decided a year ago or so that enough is enough. I tried selling what I could, with a few takers... If craig'slist worked for you I might have to try it. I am going to college in a year and a half and I can only take a few cards. I have gotton so frustrated with all my cards, that one day I found some manilla envelopes, a pen, and some paper bags, and I started stuffing cards into them and I just gave them away. I also sell team lots, and those go for pretty good, except when I make them, they get moved on me and I am missing one that I HAVE to find...

I keep a couple hundred commons handy for TTM, and I was going to pluck every TTM signer out of the common boxes, but that isn't going to work, so they are all going to go. That way maybe I can get some fundage for BGS gradings/authentications and ball cubes. I don't want to just chuck them, because then we lose whatever money we had. Even if I can bring in a fraction of what we put into them, it's worth it for me.

my mom sold everything we had in her attic last year in a yard sale for $100.. it was like 15 or so 5k boxes full of commons from late 80's early 90's and some sets from those years too. I was shocked she got that much although its not much considering the volume of stuff bought (even though worthless on the secondary market). Less I had to deal with to be honest so I was happy to hear it went.

But if you hold on for another century (or two) they will be worth $$$

I've always wondered if the 300ct. boxes wouldn't make an excellent poor man's firelog...

I posted this a few other places. It sounds like I got decent money for the cards being I sold the equivalent of TWO 5,000 ct. boxes for $65.

I had 3 Dell computer boxes full of '80s & '90s commons (about 15,000 cards each box) and I put a $15.00 price on each box at our garage sale. A man and his young son bought a box earlier in the morning and came back and bought the other two around noon. 45,000 commons for $45 sounded good enough for me.

when it comes to commons, i'll take any price a buyer will pay! unless i've put the card in one of my collections or sets, i'll take any price above $0.

The problem is always the effort involved- ebay is cost prohibitive.

And if you can't sell them, give them away. Taking a hint from others, last year I put together team bags full of cards for Halloween. Since I've been collecting for 30+ years, I had plenty to choose from. Last year I put together bags of 10 cards split between 1987 Topps and 2007 Bowman. Since I live in MN I made sure each bag contained a Twins card and also an all-star. I think I gave out 50+ bags and will probably try to do the same this year with 1988/2008.